


Impressions

by writeytighty



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Bookstore Employee Hermione Granger, Depression, Explicit Language, F/M, Flashbacks, Fluff, Fun, HEA, Implied Sexual Content, Lots of Arguing, M/M, Mentions of Rape, Mentions of Suicide, Ministry of Magic Employee Hermione Granger, POV Draco Malfoy, POV Hermione Granger, Pining, Post-Hogwarts, Romance, Self-Harm, Slow Burn, Therapy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-31
Updated: 2021-03-10
Packaged: 2021-03-10 17:26:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 30,855
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28440864
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/writeytighty/pseuds/writeytighty
Summary: They experienced just about a dozen significant interactions in their lives, but all of them felt purposeful, intense, and catalytic. Like synchronicities. Meaningful coincidences. Four years after the war, they coincidentally meet again. And again. And again. A story about how Draco Malfoy and Hermione Granger figured things out with some bickering, snark, wit, and calling out each other's shit.Slow burn. Lots of that good ol' Dramione arguing we all know and love. Alternating Draco/Hermione POV. Post-Hogwarts with flashbacks.
Relationships: Astoria Greengrass/Original Male Character(s), Harry Potter/Ginny Weasley, Hermione Granger/Draco Malfoy, Pansy Parkinson/Blaise Zabini, Theodore Nott/Ron Weasley
Comments: 13
Kudos: 41





	1. Flourish & Blotts & Malkin's

**Author's Note:**

> hello! first time posting, kinda nervous. been reading dramione for too many years. please be gentle as this is what i consider my first real fanfic! (i wrote one for fun when i was 12 that hardly counts.)
> 
> anyway, this fic primarily focuses on processing post-war emotions/trauma. everyone gets along for the most part because 1) this was for fun! and 2) i wanted to focus on the psychology of it all. despite some intense themes, i think it's still an overall fun read with lots of bantering, wit, and teasing between... all the characters, really. Not the most unique fic, but i'm having fun nonetheless! i'm already more than halfway done (i think) with 16 chapters in so far.
> 
> i really hope anyone who stumbles upon this enjoys!

The public hypothesized many potential career paths for Hermione Granger -- some said she would continue working for the Ministry, others predicted she’d become a professor, and the more ambitious ones believed she would eventually run for Minister of Magic one day.

But, for whatever reason, she shattered all those predictions and left her job at the Ministry to manage Diagon Alley’s acclaimed bookstore, Flourish & Blotts.

After spending her childhood, adolescence, and some of her early adulthood fighting for and picking up the pieces of a broken wizarding country, she settled her burnt out psyche and let herself do something less… demanding. Serving justice was exhausting. Not to mention how _cute_ the bewildered first years who flooded in at the end of August for their textbooks were.

Hermione smiled warmly at a confused customer between the wizarding biographies and magic guides. “Are you finding everything alright?”

The customer in question spun around and stared agape at the image of _the_ Hermione Granger.

Hermione stood before her in autumnal-tinted robes that gave off a fitting air of warmth and professionalism. A muggle pen was tucked behind her ear and her trademark curly hair sat messily at the top of her head.

"Yes!" the customer exclaimed once she recovered from the initial shock. "I need to find this book." She held out a crumpled, tea-stained parchment.

Hermione’s face lit up. She led the woman through a series of shelves lined with new and tattered books. The bookstore was alive with covers of novels and spines with moving pictures and illustrations. They walked past school textbooks sporting various textures -- rough and smooth, furry and scaly -- and academic journals. Clanging swords and the familiar sounds of spells being cast rang briefly through their ears as they walked past the historical fiction shelves until they finally reached a section of best-sellers.

Hermione participated in small talk with the woman about the synopsis of the book, the harrowing issues it acknowledged about power, humanity’s weakness to regret, the dangers of time turners, and how the next installment would be released this weekend.

At the end of the conversation, the woman’s gaze lingered on Hermione’s face, as if trying to muster up the courage to say something.

“Anything else I can do to help?” Hermione asked, tilting her head to the side.

“I—” the woman stammered. “I just wanted to say that you are a wonderful person. What you accomplished when you worked for the Ministry — just amazing.”

Hermione felt a pang of sadness, embarrassment, and gratitude. But she smiled and kindly responded, “That’s very nice of you to say. Thank you.”

“Why did you quit?” the woman asked quickly, seemingly unable to stop herself.

Dozens of people and reporters asked her this question over the years and her answer was always plain and simple:

“I just needed a change.”

The woman didn’t seem satisfied, but didn’t pry further. “Will you eventually go back?”

She ached at the thought. “I’m still figuring that out.”

“Oh, alright,” the woman responded sheepishly. “Erm, thank you again, Ms. Granger. For the book. And everything. Your work has helped me directly and I appreciate it. You gave me the power to speak.”

Hermione felt tired and a little guilty after this customer and retreated to a hallway of offices and the shipment rooms behind the registers. Entering her office, she sat down at her desk and started sifting through the ever-present paperwork in the “to do” basket at the corner of her desk. She looked at the empty "done" basket at the other corner and sighed.

Astrid Bailey, her second-in-command, lightly knocked on her door and peeked her head in. "Hermione, we just got an owl notifying us that the orders for _Code of Yesterday_ have to be owled by today if you want to have them opening day."

She gasped and frantically started searching her desk for the desired papers she needed to fill out. She almost started to panic until she found them right in front of her. Hermione let out a sigh of relief and laughed at herself.

"Thanks for reminding me. You really saved my life there."

"Oh, my, here comes Ginny… she’s coming in fast and she doesn’t look happy,” Astrid warned her boss as she stepped aside to let the frantic redhead through to Hermione's office.

"I'm so sorry! I practically pushed you out of the way!" Ginny apologized, looking out of breath. 

“Not a problem, soon-to-be Mrs. Potter,” Astrid said with a smile.

Harry and Ginny began dating almost immediately following the war. They took their relationship slowly and two years into dating, opted in for a two-year engagement. Harry was sure of Ginny the week after they started dating in his sixth year, but for both their sakes, he knew he needed to properly work through an entire lifetime of trauma before fully committing himself to her. Hermione thought they were perfect. If any two people deserved to be married, it was them.

Ginny smiled at Astrid and her eyes widened as she brought her attention to her friend. " _Hermione!_ "

"Yes, Ginny?” she asked while signing a signature spot on one of the parchments she was just frantically looking for.

"This wedding is going to be a pure _disaster_!" Ginny exclaimed, using her hands to emphasize the gravity of the situation.

Hermione dropped her quill and brought her full attention to the bride-to-be.

"The wedding is in three days and there is only so much a woman could do! And as my Maid of Honor and the intimidating woman you are, I am not only asking, but _demanding_ that you help me. I will not tolerate any of your grumpy ‘marriage is stupid’ attitude—”

“Okay, I never said it was _stupid_ —”

Yes, she did. Blankly and outright. Several times.

“Don’t you lie to me today, Hermione Granger!”

Hermione liked the idea of marriage as a concept for _other_ people who were capable of finding an appropriate match, could function adequately in the presence of emotional vulnerability, and actually go on dates and give people chances. But why was she so resistant anyway? Harry, Ron, and Ginny sought the answer to this question for years, but it was probably due to her commitment issues, stemming from deep feelings of inadequacy and an inherent need to prove others wrong since the tender age of 11 when she enrolled in a Wizarding school as a muggleborn… Or maybe not. She wasn’t quite willing to explore that part yet.

"Of course I'll help you. I just need to finish—"

"Oh, Hermione, this is the best part! I worked out a bunch of things you can do for me already. Wait, hear this, since I know that you are more in love with your assortment of quills and their corresponding array of ink viscosities than the idea of being with an actual man—"

Hermione opened her mouth and put a hand on her heart in mock offense. “You know how I feel about my ink viscosities!”

"—I decided to write up an immensely organized list that is color-coded and everything! Look." Ginny put a piece of parchment on Hermione's desk. She looked down at it and raised her eyebrows, impressed.

“You have simply outdone yourself, Ginny. Look at you using those multi-colored inks,” she said like a proud mother.

"You don't have to leave your desk until you get near the end of that list. Most of it is sending out angry letters, demanding confrontations, hopefully getting free stuff because of their mess-ups, and a couple other things related to wardrobes and sweets.”

"Fantastic, I'll get right on it.”

"Thanks, Hermione!" With all being said, Ginny left Hermione's office and hurried out the door.

Hermione put the list aside after scanning over it quickly and finished signing the papers for the upcoming book release. She placed them in her done pile and got to the crucially important task at hand: finishing Ginny’s list in two hours before her lunch break.

She sighed and got to work, checking off everything that she completed as she went. If Hermione Granger was good at anything, it was at ranting, complaining, and demanding justice. 

Her shining example of this was her work on what is now called Dobby's Law. For years, she made up a sound and well-researched argument and plan regarding elfish labor rights. Dobby’s Law passed and it required house elves to be compensated. It mandated elves to participate in classes about a historical analysis of elfish labor rights to acknowledge and challenge the deep-seated belief that the elvish race are deserving of punishment.

Hermione made sure to outline in Dobby’s Law — what seemed like — every possible stipulation that could come in its way. Wizarding families wanting to foster house elves to work in their homes were required to attend a six-week program, educating them on the history of the elvish race and their enslavement, and learn how to ease their house elves into the idea of freedom. Elves and the owner were also required to consult with a caseworker from the Department of Magical Creatures periodically. 

Hermione, of course, thought of it all. She pushed for laws, research, and ideas and put together a sound program — a catalyst for the shifting views of house elves in Wizarding history.

In short: Hermione Granger did not play.

She walked swiftly to Astrid’s office, appointing her as the point person as she took her lunch.

Hermione rushed out of Flourish and Blotts, putting on her cloak as she ran out the door. Something had to go wrong with _that_ , out of all things, and she found herself putting her arm through the wrong sleeve. This caused her to stop in the middle of the busy street in order to properly put on her cloak. Damn, six seconds lost. Six seconds she'd never get back. What a disaster.

Seconds behind schedule, she Apparated. After feeling that uncomfortable pull, she found herself in front of Malkin’s Bride and Groom — a standalone extension of the Madam Malkin’s Robes for All Occasions. She entered the store, sounding a little bell by the door. Hermione soon stood before a tall and overwhelming wall of ties to complete one more item off the list: choose ties for Harry and Ro to wear for the wedding. Apparently, Harry and Ron had terrible taste in ties and Ginny trusted her, for absolutely no reason, to choose for them.

Hermione simply stared. How in the world was she supposed to choose? They had every color in 18 different shades! She sighed, bringing a hand to her chin deep in thought. She very quickly concluded that this was an impossible task — possibly seven times harder than any of Harry’s Triwizard tasks.

“ _She's_ the one who's picky about the tie he wears. Why should I pick it out?" she mumbled.

Their colors for Harry and Ron were red, but _"not that obnoxiously bright Gryffindor red, for goodness sake,"_ Ginny had said in the past. _"Just because we're all Gryffindors doesn't mean everything we own needs to be that cherry red!"_

So Hermione concluded she was looking for a darker red — perhaps a deep maroon? Well, good thing the wall had a dozen different choices with "maroon" in the name!

As she continued to overthink the tie choices, an arm stretched out in front of her and grabbed a tie from the wall, very well almost hitting her in the face. Already frustrated from her indecisiveness, Hermione refrained from groaning childishly.

"Excuse me," she fumed, looking at the person who had the nerve. Her insides twisted and eyes widened when she saw him.

"Interesting seeing you here, Granger," he drawled. That familiar trademark smirk crossed his face and she saw early Hogwarts days flash before her eyes.

Oh, wonderful.

* * *

The public hypothesized only two pitiful paths for the young Draco Malfoy: get locked up in Azkaban or live a cursed life as an outsider. Doomed to forever be known as the cowardly boy who brought Death Eaters into Hogwarts and just couldn’t kill Albus Dumbledore. The coward of both the light and dark.

He absentmindedly waved his wand at two different pans over his stove as he skimmed the front page of the _Daily Prophet_. The spices mingled in the air above one of the stove and dispersed into the hashbrowns that were quickly browning.

_HARRY POTTER AND GINNY WEASLEY TO BE MARRIED THIS FRIDAY_

_The day has come — The Boy Who Lived and his long-time girlfriend and fiancée will be tying the knot this Friday! The couple were spotted walking out of Diagon Alley into Muggle London, presumably to their wedding venue. The whereabouts have been revealed only to guests and the venue’s employees._

Draco skipped past the mini biographies of each of their lives until his eyes gravitated toward another name. 

_Ronald Weasley and Hermione Granger were chosen to be the Best Man and Maid of Honor for the famous couple. Weasley currently works in the Auror Department with Potter. Granger, who previously worked in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, is currently managing Flourish & Blotts as their manager. The pair, once known as the fated lovers from Hogwarts, separated three years ago. Reports have revealed that Weasley and Granger remain to be very close. Will walking down the aisle bring back those old sparks these ex-lovers had?_

It was a wonder that they didn’t work out. Their names were in the papers for weeks — gossips and reporters sought out any details and overdramatized the breakup to be a sensation. Weasley would be standing next to a random woman from another department at the Ministry and an entire exposé was written the next day about him being unfaithful with The Woman From Accounting.

Draco heavily enjoyed the show that played out in the papers each day. It was terrible for them, yes, but god was it entertaining. Much better than the coverage of him. He remembered a piece that was written about him just a year ago by a complete shit reporter.

_MALFOY HEIR ALLEGEDLY SENDS THOUSANDS OF GALLEONS TO U.S.A._

_A trusted source reports that Draco Malfoy has been illegally sending several thousand galleons to the United States each month. To who? What for? It seems the pureblood family is seeking to keep this information secret._

_In the 1940s, Abraxas Malfoy, the young Malfoy’s grandfather, conspired with a business partner in the States to advance pureblood supremacy. Abraxas contributed to several causes that oppressed muggleborns and joined together with other purebloods to create an ‘anti-mudblood movement’ that was quickly thwarted by the Magical Congress of the United States of America (MACUSA)._

_Is Malfoy trying to start an uprising and finish what his grandfather started decades ago? Are his contributions to charities meant to cover what he’s really doing with the fortune he inherited?_

The sheer amount of misinformation in that article triggered a fit that poor Astoria had to witness.

Astoria.

He couldn’t believe they had the courage to finally do it.

With a start, he remembered the hashbrowns he was on the brink of burning and conjured his completed skillet breakfast to the plate in front of him.

He scanned the rest of the paper for anything important or interesting. His eyes gravitated once again to her name in a small corner within the entertainment pages. There was a picture of her inside the bookstore with the view of the vast Flourish & Blotts shelves behind her.

_HERMIONE GRANGER PREPARES STORE FOR BOOK RELEASE OF A LONG-AWAITED SEQUEL_

He ate his breakfast as he read the rest of the article. He mentally took note of this highly acclaimed book to read for later. And then he looked at the picture again. She wore a pin-striped blouse tucked into an A-line skirt, smiling with one hand on the display the books would be piled on opening day and her other hand at her side. She looked happy, but she didn’t… _seem_ happy. Her shoulders were slightly tense, the muscles at the ends of her smile looked strained, and her eyes — she was faking it. He wondered if anybody knew.

“Draco, hon, don’t forget to sign those papers on the coffee table!”

He jumped. He didn’t even realize Astoria had come through the floo. She rushed into the kitchen and swiftly walked the perimeter of the room, her eyes intent on finding something.

“Astoria, what—”

“Aha!” She fastened something to her ear. “I knew I lost my left earring somewhere here. Anyway, what are you doing? Are those your hashbrowns? God, Draco, you know how much I love your hashbrowns. The _crisp_ — just a work of art!”

He rolled his eyes and pushed his half-eaten plate in her direction. “I _suppose_ you can have the rest.”

“Great, because I wasn’t going to ask.” She giddily pulled the plate in front of her and started eating. “ _Mmm_ , this is exquisite, Draco. You’ve outdone yourself. The crisp is especially divine today.”

“That’s called me being distracted and almost burning it.”

“Nobody has to know that.”

“Right you are.”

She thoughtfully eyed the paper in front of him.

“You’re reading the entertainment pages? Since when?”

“In case there’s something interesting.”

“Has Celestia Warbeck died yet? If I hear another song out of that woman--”

“Still alive.”

Astoria groaned as she stuffed a concerningly large bite of hashbrowns into her mouth. Draco scowled.

“It’s a wonder you were raised in pureblood society and passed your etiquette classes.”

She sneered at him and dramatically shoved another mound of hashbrowns into her mouth. She had the decency to swallow before she spoke again.

“Good etiquette is for the public, Draco. This is all for you, _honey_.” She heavily emphasized the term of endearment.

“You think you’ll ever stop referring to me so lovingly like the married couple we will be no longer?”

She shrugged. “I guess I’ll just annoy the hell out of your future girlfriend.”

“And I’ll be sure to scare off anyone who attempts to be your boyfriend, _dear_.” He smirked as he raised the cup of tea to his lips.

Astoria and Draco married four years ago, only months after the Battle of Hogwarts.

Astoria was smart, elegant, well-spoken, beautiful and — most importantly — a pureblood. Both were in a strange place when the war ended battling with different emotions and struggles, but with each other, they were okay. They could have fun. It was possible to be happy with somebody else after a war that directly included them.

The Malfoys and Greengrasses pushed for their marriage in efforts to keep the pureblood legacy alive as there weren’t many of them left. Combined with the societal pressure and the the friendly-maybe-more-than-friendly feelings they grappled with for one another, they complied. They married four months after the war.

After two years, they simply realized they could be happier without one another. They brought the possibility of separation up to their families. It did not go well.

 _“The pureblood legacy must live on,”_ the Greengrasses had said. _“Don’t disappoint us, Astoria.”_

 _“Don’t disgrace the Malfoy name, Draco,”_ Lucius had told him. _“There is no one but her who will accept a coward like you. She is our only choice.”_

After a year of trying to make it work, they concluded that they were incompatible as lovers and made much better friends. For another year, they mustered up the courage to separate. And now, they were finally doing it.

“Very strange, that Granger girl,” Astoria said, looking at the article he had just been reading. “A bookstore? Really? After everything she’s done at the Ministry?”

Draco shrugged. “Said she needed a change.”

“I didn’t realize you’ve spoken to her since the war.”

“Haven’t. That’s just what she said in interviews,” he said nonchalantly.

He sipped at his tea, ignoring Astoria’s curious gaze. She stood from her chair, wiping at her mouth with a napkin and throwing it on her empty plate. Draco walked with her to the fireplace.

“Anyway, don’t forget about our long-awaited Four-Course Divorce after we sign the final papers for our divorce on Friday. Brunch at Magic Fries and Pies! All of our dearest Slytherin friends will be in attendance.”

They had a sick sense of humor. They and all their friends had been craving this divorce for a long time now and everybody was elated by the news. Pansy screamed when he told her, Theo bought them multiple rounds of drinks in jubilation, and Blaise gave a nauseatingly heartfelt speech of how proud he was of the both of them.

“Look sharp, dear,” she said, walking to him and pinching his cheek as if he were a child. He swatted her hand away. “The papers will be seeing this. Get excited to be a pureblooded disappointment!”

“Oh, _joy_.”

She giggled and kissed his cheek before disappearing through the floo.

_Look sharp._

He had just gotten some new robes fitted that were ready to be picked up. Maybe he also needed a new tie. Yes, a new tie. A new tie for a new life.

There was some sick humor in the fact that his "Four-Course Divorce" and the Potter wedding were happening on the same day.

Minutes later, Draco ironically walked into Malkin’s Bride and Groom to pick up his robes and find a new tie for his divorce. Right when he entered the store and sounded the bell, the hairs at the back of his neck stood up, as if there was dangerous energy in the store — something he needed to brace himself for. What the fuck?

He looked around for whatever his body felt he needed to be this hyper aware of and spotted her staring before the very wall he would be browsing as well. 

Damn it, he just needed to pick up some robes and choose a new tie for his new life and he ran into her _here_? During this very symbolic moment?

What was she doing looking for a tie anyway? Was she looking for one for her date to the wedding? He never saw anything in the papers about that…

Anyway, he would not walk away from her like a damn coward and let her ruin this for him. _New tie, new life_ , for fuck’s sake!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> kudos and comments appreciated if you feel so inclined!


	2. Symbolic Ties & Ice Cream Flavors

_Anyway, he would not walk away from her like a damn coward and let her ruin this for him. New tie, new life, for fuck’s sake!_

He stood a couple feet away from her and she had the nerve to _still_ not notice him. Did she not get internally alerted by his presence in the store like he did?

It reminded him of Hogwarts. He could always feel her when she was around. Her mere _presence_ suffocated his prejudiced thoughts — she was exhausting to be around.

But she never seemed as bothered. She never turned when he entered a room, never flinched during accidental contact passing potions ingredients in class, never backed down from arguments.

He heard her mumble angrily. “ _She's_ the one who's picky about the tie he wears. Why should I pick it out?"

Something about her familiar disgruntled mumbling comforted him and he relaxed. The only appropriate way to get her attention — and prolong the Granger anger that entertained him for so many years — was to be rude. He reached an arm front of her to grab whatever tie he landed on.

"Excuse me!" she fumed, finally turning toward him.

After seeing her face for so many years only through the papers, he was surprised to see her in color. Hermione Granger was not meant to be seen in short black and white snippets.

"Interesting seeing you here, Granger.”

He suddenly felt conscious about his stance. He straightened his back in an effort to look more dignified and put-together, but put his hands in his pockets to give off a laid back, effortless air.

 _I must look like a damn clown,_ he thought.

"Now, why would I find _you_ in a _wedding_ store after all these years?" he asked her, faking confidence as he nervously fiddled with the remnants of an old napkin in his pocket.

She crossed her arms. His shoulders relaxed and he smirked. He could handle argumentative Hermione Granger.

"Don't act so surprised, Malfoy. And, not that it’s any of your business, but I'm looking for ties for Harry and Ron.”

"Ah, right, Potter and the little Weasley are finally getting married this week," he said. "I see they’ve been putting you to work.”

“The wedding is in three days, so naturally, there is endless work to do,” she said sassily, shifting toward the wall once more. “ _Marriage_ and _weddings_. What a scam.”

Draco frowned at her thoughts. He loved how it felt to be married — at first. Granted, he was getting divorced, but he didn’t attribute that to the idea of marriage as a whole — it more related to their incompatibility and rushing into a relationship after the war.

"Surely Potter and Weasley would be able to pick their _own_ ties for themselves?”

"Wrong. They have terrible taste in ties, not that I would know. I’m just doing as I’m told. Now, please, excuse me. I only have a few minutes before I have to meet Ginny," she explained quickly. She finally settled on a plain maroon tie.

He imagined Potter also needed a new tie for his new life with his future wife. And if Draco were trying to find a new tie for _his_ wedding and _his_ new life with _his_ future wife, he would never send himself off into his new life with his future wife in a tie that plain.

"Granger, I don't think you have much taste in ties either," Draco said to her condescendingly. Granger humphed in disapproval as he took the tie in her hands and put it back. "Some friend you are. You were going to make Potter wear _that_ on his wedding day?"

"What exactly are _you_ doing here, Malfoy?" Granger asked as he scanned the wall.

"Not that it’s any of your business, but I'm getting divorced this week.” He figured he could trust a member of the highly publicized Golden Trio to keep his business secret until they gave a formal announcement this weekend. She knew more than most people how to keep personal matters away from the public. “Need to master that whole divorced-but-dignified look for the papers.”

“You and Astoria? You’ve been together since—”

“I’m quite aware, Granger,” he said plainly.

She huffed. "You’re looking for a tie for your _divorce_ in a wedding store?”

He chuckled. She seemed surprised by this expression of slight mirth.

“Yes, how ironic,” he said. “I’m also getting some robes fitted. Already so judgmental not two minutes into our first conversation after the war.”

Draco had grown differently over the past four years. Because his family lost credibility due to their previous loyalty to Voldemort, Draco had to be the “good child who was misled" and revive his image. He took part in the Malfoy business — which didn’t take much work at all — and allocated a large sum of money each month to be donated to various charitable causes that he himself looked into and researched. He also started his own business for his own amusement, managing something he enjoyed.

Additionally, he aided the Auror Department — frequently coming into meetings with Harry Potter — in exposing cursed places, artifacts, and possible locations of Death Eaters attempting to start an uprising. He participated in dozens of interviews to give the Malfoy name credibility, to build it up as to not be associated with the decisions of his father and ancestors.

Yet despite all the good he had done over the years, reporters still attacked him as they uncovered his ancestors’ past transgressions, who were either dead, or in the case of his father, locked up in Azkaban At least there were no more dementors — another successful Hermione Granger project.

Technically speaking, _he_ himself was also a “successful Hermione Granger project.”

Each member of the Golden Trio defended him in his trial. The presence and testimonies of Harry ‘The Chosen One’ Potter and Ronald ‘Potter’s Best Friend’ Weasley at his trial certainly helped, but it was Hermione ‘Golden Girl’ and ‘Muggleborn’ Granger that had the entire Wizengamot at the edge of their seats.

*

_The air in the room immediately shifted when Granger, the last testimony, walked into the courtroom with her heels clacking intimidatingly on the cold-stone floor._

_Draco looked her over from his seat in the center of the room, his arms forcibly clasped to the arms of his chair. Powerful witch in professionally flattering Muggle pantsuit with her signature hair loose and expanding by the second._

_She looked determined. Every member of the Wizengamot and Draco straightened at the very sight of her._

_After the formalities, Minister Kingsley Shacklebolt gestured for her to begin._

_“I am standing before you today to testify that Draco Malfoy should be released from holding and be sentenced to one year of probation where he should be mandated to partake in treatment. He was not of age when Voldemort appointed him to kill Albus Dumbledore as a 16-year-old boy who only had his family’s best intentions. Draco and I were by no means friends in school, nor were we particularly kind to one another, however...”_

__Draco. _He knew she was only using his given name because it sounded better to do so in his defense. But he didn’t know how badly he craved for her to say his first name until that moment. It almost felt like they were on equal footing. Like he was in the same world as her._

_Granger fought to keep her eyes up and not falter as she said the second half of her statement. Draco could only stare at her in astonishment. He couldn’t believe she was doing this for him, a two-timing, cowardly bastard._

_“... we had a series of isolated conversations from our fourth through sixth years that — I believe — attested to his true character. I spoke to Draco before and minutes after Dumbledore was killed and can speak in full confidence that he was remorseful for the way he aided the Death Eaters’ entrance into Hogwarts.”_

_People whispered to one anoththroughout the room._

_“How do you know he was remorseful?” Kingsley asked._

_Her eyes flitted to Draco for exactly a second. He remembered the one second they made eye contact as she was tortured in his drawing room. He pushed all those thoughts to the perimeter of his mind._

_“His emotional state reflected deep shame and guilt.”_

_She knew all the buzz words they needed to hear._

_“And what do you have to say about the Imperius Curse he performed on your former housemate, Katie Bell, holding the cursed artifact that almost killed her?”_

_Draco flinched and a blanket of shame covered his chest, constricting it. Granger, however, did not flinch or blink or even shift uncomfortably. He stared at her and found shreds of comfort in her grace, her confidence in front of the most important members in the Ministry._

_“To this, and all his crimes, including the poisoned wine that was supposed to be gifted to Professor Dumbledore and ended up almost killing my current partner—”_

_So they were finally dating then? Took them long enough. Draco didn’t receive the paper while in holding, so he entertained himself with the tattered Muggle books they left them with. He wondered if they thought he would scowl at the Muggle literature and throw the books sideways, but instead he read every single one._ Pride and Prejudice, Great Expectations, _and_ Count of Monte Cristo – _he assumed they were Muggle classics as they were all written in the 1800s._

 _There were a few recent ones. He almost threw up reading a romance novel by something-Sparks._ The Notebook _. Ruddy terrible. He found_ An Unquiet Mind _especially fascinating. A biography of a woman who had something called “bipolar disorder” which essentially made her a nutcase. He had never heard of anything like it. Did wizards experience these mental disorders too or was it only Muggles? His father would love to say such struggles only affected weak, little Muggles, but Draco wasn’t so naïve._

_He saw what the author described as “mania” in Voldemort. He saw “depression” in himself. But this woman experienced both of those states within herself? Wizard or Muggle – how could anyone stand that?_

_And then there was another one called_ Perks of Being a Wallflower _. A “young adult” book. It looked brand new. It had come out this year. With a title like that, he thought it would be a lighthearted read, but holy_ fuck _did that damn book tear at him. Damn these Muggles and their modern literature._

_“—I would say that he was wrong. I would also say that, again, he was not of age when Voldemort appointed him to kill Albus Dumbledore as a 16-year-old boy who only had his family’s best intentions.”_

_“He had a choice, Miss Granger,” Kingsley said._

_“Forgive me, Minister, but we all know that choices aren’t black and white. To choose to deny Voldemort would entail the very possible death of himself and his family. To choose to carry through with Voldemort’s mission — if Professor Snape never relieved him of this burden — killing Professor Dumbledore would have also meant the destruction of his soul. I am not saying he is innocent, I am not saying he couldn’t make better choices — I am saying that it is unfair to punish him for the crimes he committed at 16 as if he were grown adult. His crimes as a minor should not lead him to a sentence in Azkaban to receive the Dementor’s Kiss.”_

_Her words silenced them all. How did she…_ see _him? How did she understand the complexity and mental anguish of the choice he had to make? She had just put all the guilty and messy thoughts that plagued him every day in a succinct and logical statement in front of the Wizengamot. How did Granger have the time to analyze his psyche? He felt his chest compress warmly at the thought of her thinking about him — trying to understand him._

_He watched her chest slowly rise and fall. The way she always looked before she delivered a blow. In the heat of any of their arguments, anything that came out of her mouth after this kind of breath disarmed him._

_“Are we putting Harry on trial for almost killing Draco with a fatal spell invented by Professor Snape?”_

_She may as well have slapped every single member of the Wizengamot in the face._

_“Are you going to put me on trial for illegally brewing a Polyjuice Potion in our second year?”_

_Granger brewed a fucking transfiguration potion when they were 12? Also… why?_

_“What about for Harry and Ron driving an enchanted car to school, being seen by Muggles, and crashing it into the Whomping Willow? What about me using a Time Turner in our third year for a purpose other than what it was originally given to me for, setting a hippogriff and a prisoner free?”_

_“You have made your po—”_

_“How about when Harry, Ron, Neville, Ginny, Luna, and myself deceived Umbridge, took her into the Forbidden Forest, and introduced her to Grawp, the half-giant Harry and I were taking care of for months? Not to mention when we broke into the Department of Mysteries… And when we knocked out a few Ministry members and turned into them via Polyjuice in order to steal something from Umbridge’s office?”_

_“Yes, yes, Ms. Granger. You have made your point!” Kingsley exclaimed._

_Draco had to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing._

_And then she continued to the story that would align her testimony with Harry’s and Ron’s._

_“In Malfoy Manor, Draco was ordered to identify Harry, Ron, and myself. Despite having gone to school with us for several years, he denied knowing our identities.”_

__Oh, yes, great. How absolutely heroic of me to do that, but not do shit when my aunt was torturing you, _Draco thought icily._

_The Wizengamot questioned her mercilessly for another hour — twice as long as they spoke to either of her friends. They brought up very specific examples of his treatment to her. They mentioned the spell that had her teeth growing at an abnormal rate. They asked her about the false stories he shared about her to Rita Skeeter in their fourth year._

__“You’ll be next, mudbloods.” _They asked approximately seven times how she felt about him calling her ‘mudblood’ their entire adolescence._

_Draco did not once take his eyes off her. Hermione Granger demanded to be listened to. Her very presence always paralyzed him, his thoughts, his preconceived notions, and narrow-minded views of the world beyond his family. And she paralyzed him today in her defense of his character that he didn’t deserve._

_“Ms. Granger, do you know what this boy’s family has done?”_

_He swore he saw her hair increase toward the ceiling. He relished in the familiar sight of her lips pursing tightly with a look of raw rage — except this time he got to see it directed at somebody else. At the entire Wizengamot._

_“Considering I went to school with him for six years, was tortured by his aunt in his drawing room, and have been answering your relentless questions for the past hour about his upbringing—”_

_He almost laughed. Hermione Granger did not give a_ fuck _in the best possible way._

_“—I would say yes. I am fully aware of what he and his family have done. I will remind you for the third time that I am here to testify solely on the case of Draco Malfoy and not the entire Malfoy lineage.”_

_In-fucking-credible._

_Kingsley stared glumly back at Granger’s scathing look._

_“Based on the information I’ve presented to you today, I believe Draco Malfoy should be released and placed on probation with mandated treatment. I believe he should be recognized for all the ways he has shifted from the deep-seated belief encouraged by his upbringing and regarded me, a muggleborn, as his equal.”_

_“Thank you, Miss Granger.”_

_Draco knew he would be free before the Minister officially declared it so._

*

Marriage didn’t work for him the first time around, but he was very different then. They were still kids. Hardly 18-years-old. Now that he’d learned and grown and fully processed his own experiences, _maybe_ this time he’d make a wiser decision based on something more than, “I was able to have fun with her when everything else was shit, so she must be the one.”

"Well something needs to be done about that, don't you think?” Draco asked her.

"I'm doing just fine on my own," she said a bit too defensively.

He stared at her and remembered those pictures of her from the _Daily Prophet_. How she looked happy, but somehow didn’t _seem_ happy.

He shrugged. "If that’s what you think, who am I to tell Hermione Granger that she’s wrong?”

She stared back at him suspiciously, her eyebrows scrunching together and mouth slightly open, as if a thought laid constantly at the tip of her tongue.

"Fine, then. Maybe one day, I won't think so bad of the idea. But as of right now… doesn’t do it for me.”

"Here. This tie should do more nicely," Draco said, steering away from the topic.

He gave her a deep red tie with a subtle embroidered pattern. She scowled at it.

"Don't act as if it's not a good pick, Granger. I do still know you enough."

And then Hermione Granger burst into color. Her cheeks went pink, brown eyes widened, and fists clenched white. The sunlight shone into the store and had her almost glowing in rage.

"You most certainly do _not_ know me! How can you speak to me after — I don't even know how many years it's been—”

"Four." He didn’t realize he was keeping count.

"— _Four_ years and just assume that you know me?" She aggressively swiped the tie he suggested from him, accidentally making contact with his hand. He fought not to flinch.

Like passing potions ingredients.

"Have you forgotten that I went to school with you for several years?"

"It's not as if we had a cup of tea and talked over things every day, Malfoy. You didn't exactly _know_ me during those years either. You were a self-centered and pompous and cowardly person, who didn’t care for anyone but himself."

Her words were sharp like silver. His jaw clenched. Did he hallucinate all their conversations at Hogwarts or was she in denial?

He was alive. Arguing with Granger was like muscle memory.

"How interesting that those were exactly the descriptions you sought to have the Wizengamot _ignore_ at my trial, yet here you are using them against me four years later. I _was_ those things, Granger. Maybe the sodding mandated _treatment_ they forced me into taught me a thing or two." Deciding on a tie, he walked past her and said, "Maybe I've even learned more than you? No, impossible, right? _Clearly_ you are doing an absolutely stellar job handling your problems."

She rushed right in front of him so quickly, he briefly wondered if she was actually stupid enough to Apparate two feet just to prove her point. She was very close to him now, ready to kill.

"You have _no idea_ what I’ve gone through and what I’ve learned,” she said darkly. Split-second flashes flickered through his mind. Her face looked strangely distant, almost as if she were experiencing the same flashes. “Don’t you dare _assume_ who’s learned more than the other. We all went through it, Malfoy.”

“Then, how about you stop holding onto pointless schooltime grudges, Granger? It simply _hurts my little feelings_ that you haven’t noticed all the ways I’ve tried to rise above them,” he said sarcastically.

It did hurt his feelings a little bit — he wanted to separate himself from that image completely. Harry and Ron proved to be able to get past the Hogwarts years after their brief bouts of working together post-war. He knew he wouldn’t convince everyone, but it still secretly stung.

Especially from her.

Granger shrugged. “I guess it doesn’t matter what I think. Anyway, what _is_ still the same is how much you’re still _wasting my time_. Move aside, Malfoy. I’ve got work to do.” She rushed past him.

Draco stared after her as she walked up to the cashier and paid for the tie. He looked down at the ground and smirked. A piece of parchment had fallen to the ground in her haste.

Seeing her again felt like a mirage. He couldn’t believe that after four entire years, he had spoken to every single one of her friends, but never her.

It looked like she had one more thing to do on her impressively color-coded Maid of Honor checklist. He paid for his very symbolic tie and walked out.

* * *

Draco wasn’t exactly a _stalker_. It wasn’t his fault she dropped a very detailed list of what she had been up to the past couple hours... He was simply _returning it_.

He had no idea why.

Draco appeared to arrive there before Granger and the bride-to be somehow. Maybe there had been a change of plans? Anyway, while he was there, he figured he might as well purchase a cup with one butter pecan scoop. He opened the door to sit outside and ran into a hurried Ginny Weasley.

"Oh, I'm so sorry—" She stopped talking when she realized the recipient of her apology. She first looked surprised and defensive, then softened when she brought herself back to the present. "Well, hello there, Malfoy."

Though she greeted him like a business partner, Draco appreciated it. Now that was more like it. _Much_ kinder than Granger’s snappy greeting.

He took out the list that Granger stormed off without and held it out to her. "I believe your servant dropped this when buying your fiancé’s tie."

Ginny looked at him confusedly and snatched the parchment away from him with her free hand. The other one was holding an impressive amount of bags. "How did you—”

"Ran into her at Malkin’s. She’s just as _pleasant_ as I remembered,” he drawled.

"What are you trying to say?" Ginny asked, putting a hand on her hip.

He almost rolled his eyes. _Weasleys and their loyalty._

"I didn’t know Granger would be one to hold grudges — even Potter and your brother did better in that department.”

Ginny’s face fell slightly, which intrigued Draco. “Well, she’s had a whole different set of things to figure out herself.”

What things?

“Anyway, don’t be so quick to judge, Malfoy,” she snapped protectively.

“And it’s okay for her to quickly judge me?”

Ginny sighed. “Not what I’m saying.” Changing the subject, she said, “I think it’s great what you did for the wizard recovery program. I know Hermione was secretly grateful despite her refusal to ever acknowledge it.”

His interest piqued and he raised his eyebrows. “Why would she be grateful?”

She widened her eyes, as if she had just done something gravely wrong. “Oh, shite… Anyway, what flavor did you get? Is it any good?”

“You’ve already messed up, Weasley, just tell me why,” he said almost threateningly. 

“No, I can’t, that’s her business. Though I don’t know _why_ she wouldn’t publicize something like that. She was at the Ministry for hours after closing, sometimes coming home at ten at night...” she rambled.

Draco grew impatient, clenching his jaw. “You _do_ remember what’s happening this week, Weasley? You do know I could easily back out?”

“Oh, you wouldn’t,” she said, rolling her eyes, not at all taking the bait.

“You’re right, I wouldn’t. That would be bad business,” he admitted. Ginny actually smiled. “Just tell me. I helped them out too — what would be the harm in me, a fellow helper of the program, know what another helper did as well?”

“Okay, but I’m only telling you because you helped with the program and she is completely ridiculous for not taking credit for it _and_ I would think you more than anyone would know to keep personal matters out of the public eye. But _then_ can I get my ice cream?”

Draco smirked at his victory.

“Hermione completely revamped that program two years ago because it was dreadful the way they were being treated. She worked constantly... we hardly saw her for weeks. It was hardly a program until she came in. She created an entire curriculum and made the forms to fit Ministry guidelines. She argued with Ministry officials, had people sacked, spoke to everyone who was ever part of the program for feedback... She did all this for free and _anonymously_ while she worked at the Ministry.”

“For _free_? What kind of nut would do all that for free? She could have easily been paid for creating an entire program—”

“We told her that too, but she didn’t care. It was a passion thing, you know? She had her own reasons, I guess.”

Draco was more impressed at this news than he wanted to be. Granger worked at the Ministry for almost three years in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement and very suddenly, for the past year, took up a job as the manager for Flourish and Blotts? From fighting for justice for all witches, wizards, and magical creatures to managing a bookstore — Hermione Granger was definitely very _weird_.

“Well, you are now free to purchase your ice cream. The butter pecan is delicious, by the way,” Draco said as he continued out the door.

“Not that I needed your permission, but thank you,” she said.

After exiting the shop, he saw the witch he was most keen to see, rushing into the ice cream shop without noticing him at all. He watched from outside the glass windows of the ice cream place as Granger talked to Ginny.

Ginny, who already purchased her mint chocolate chip ice cream, pointed at him with her spoon. Granger turned around and she glared and they exited the shop after they both had purchased their ice cream. 

"Thank you, Malfoy, for returning the list. And for helping pick out Harry and Ron's ties," Ginny said with a spoon in her mouth as she continued walking. Granger stayed, standing in front of him, still glaring.

"You look like you’re itching to say something, Granger.”

She sneered and Draco prepared himself for a smart remark.

“I only have so many words to waste on you, Malfoy. I believe you’ve reached your quota for today.”

He smirked. "Well, I am _honored_ , Granger, that you wasted any words on me at all.”

She scowled as she looked at his ice cream. “Butter pecan? Are you 87-years-old, Malfoy?”

Draco looked at her ice cream choice and scowled as well. “Who goes into an ice cream place and chooses the _sherbet_?”

“Oh, shove it, Grandpa Malfoy.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> does butter pecan get a bad rep in your circles too? everyone absolutely shits on me for liking it so much because apparently it's only for old people... anyway, hope you enjoyed this chapter with the very first flashback! there will be many more dispersed throughout the story. i had lots of fun writing those, so can't wait for you all to read them. please leave some kudos/comments if you feel so inclined!


	3. Riddles & Storms

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is my take on how ridiculous working in a wizarding bookstore must be. oh, and shout out if you can identify the movie reference in this chapter!

"Ginny, you can't be serious," Hermione said, looking frightened as she backed away with her hands dramatically in front of her.

"Oh, I've never been more serious," Ginny replied, holding a dress in her hands that had Hermione in a fright.

"Ginny, it's… orange. And what on earth made you think I'd like wearing something this revealing?"

"It's not orange. It's peach," Ginny corrected matter-of-factly. "Also – don't you dare complain about the bride's choices, Hermione. You should know better."

All right, the dress was very nice, but Hermione mostly disagreed with the deep neckline and revealing back.

"Hermione, this is my day, I think you would look stunning in this dress, and did I mention that it's mine and Harry's wedding? Two of your greatest friends? I don't know if you forgot – Harry? He was the one you ran around with destroying pieces of an evil wizard's soul? The Chosen One who saved us all? Also, me – Ginny Weasley? Your long-term friend and confidant who is not the Chosen One, but was chosen by the Chosen One, who is – once again – your best friend?"

Hermione huffed and put a hand up to stop her. "Ginny, for the love of – yes, fine. I'll wear your peach dress." She was the Maid of Honor and she had to do as she was asked. That was how this whole wedding thing worked. Hermione swiped the dress out of Ginny's hand and muttered defeatedly.

Ginny beamed before crashing down onto her couch with a satisfied sigh, as if she just completed the hardest part of her day.

"So tell me, Maid of Honor. Why so snarky with Malfoy today?" she asked, looking at Hermione carefully, who was staring at the dress in her hands with obvious discomfort.

"What do you mean?" Hermione said, looking up as she laid the dress carefully on the coffee table.

"Well, it was just... odd. You seemed unnerved by him somehow, I don't know."

"I was not unnerved by him," Hermione said defensively. "I was more… annoyed. And surprised."

"Honestly, he impressed me. I saw him occasionally when I visited Harry at work, but that was the longest conversation we've had in years. Did you read in the Daily Prophet how he donated all that money to the recovery program?"

Hermione made it a point to not look at her as she straightened any non-existent wrinkles on the dress with her hands. She had seen it and she didn't want to talk about it. She didn't entirely know why she felt this way, but it had something to do with the fact that this program meant a great deal to her and her biggest bully was associated with it as well. It didn't sit right with her. It was unfamiliar – suspicious, really – that he would donate to such an underrepresented program. Was this just a show to him? Did he really give a damn or had he been donating all this money to various social service organizations over the years to glorify the sullied Malfoy name?

She liked predictability and familiarity. Draco Malfoy donating to an organization that meant something to her was not predictable or familiar. It was easier to think of Malfoy as the insecure teenager, despite all the ways he had changed or grown.

Despite what she said at his trial.

"Yeah, I did," Hermione said finally. "I wouldn't think too much of it. He's donated to several charities – to boost morale, I bet."

Ginny rolled her eyes. "Aren't you a spoilsport? Why can't somebody donate to several charities to boost his name and be a grown person? Somebody can be both, you know."

"I just can't think of him being 'both.' It's too much for my brain to handle, especially on a day that I was just told I'd need to wear an orange – alright, peach dress," she corrected herself after Ginny's glare.

Hermione was relieved when Ginny seemed to drop the conversation. But why was Hermione so resistant to say anything more about it? Why the resistance to move on from old school rivalries, especially when Harry and Ron have been able to before her?

"Isn't your lunch break over?" Ginny asked after glancing at the clock. She took time to relish the horrified expression on Hermione's face and quickly said goodbye to her as she Disapparated.

She left the dress on the table. Ginny sighed. 

* * *

Hermione shot up from her bed at four o'clock the next morning in a panic, covered in sweat from a dream she couldn't remember. She hated when this happened. Why was breathing and sleeping so hard? She attempted to inhale slowly through her nose and exhale through her mouth to calm the pounding in her chest and ears, but she choked out a sob that came from a place too deep for her articulate.

She hardly remembered any of her dreams, but every time she felt this way, her hand reached for the scar on her left forearm. She experienced days where she frantically tried to scratch it off with her nails as she relived the memory over and over and over.

Her head began to spin and the walls started closing in. Her sobs turned into screaming. Destructive mantras, words, slurs, and memories filled her mental space, throwing all logic aside and only leaving behind heavy feelings of guilt, loneliness, and shame. And hate.

Sometimes, she hated herself.

 _I'm a fraud,_ she thought. _Can't anyone tell?_

This was why she left the Ministry over a year ago. This was why her relationship with Ron failed.

She went through phases. She looked forward to the months the nightmares quelled and her appetite and sleep returned to normal. It was the hope for those phases that kept her from reaching out to her friends and family.

Harry, Ron, and Ginny knew most of it - the nightmares, lack of sleep, disordered eating, bags under her eyes. They knew she still dreamed about that day in Malfoy Manor and her family problems. But they didn't know it all. She couldn't bring herself to tell them, to give them all of herself. Every time she tried to tell Ron while they dated, she swallowed the bile that made its way up to her throat. They noticed and understood her decision to wear long sleeves at all times, through every season. They knew the knife Bellatrix used on her skin was shrouded in dark magic that left a permanent scar. During their arguments, she'd leave, promising to come back to it in the morning once she'd calmed down. But she never did. She buried herself in work and Ron couldn't push himself through the wards she built around her.

During the phases the memories and nightmares intrusively entered her daily life, she didn't even want to spend time with her friends. She felt terrible for not feeling excited for her best friends' wedding. The mental toll sucked the joy out of every interaction. It felt like a Dementor traveled alongside her at all times. Her emotions were cold. Her insides felt frozen in place - never progressing, never getting over it. She craved an emotional warmth that she couldn't find in anybody - not her friends, not her family, not her job, nor her cat.

Maybe if she took the time to think about it, she would have realized that she had burst aflame for the first time in a long time at Malkin's shop.

She curled into a ball under her blankets, unable to stop her tears and the aching in her chest. She was too scared to fall back asleep. She stared at the ceiling for hours, letting her tears dry in white flaky streaks down her face and temples. Hours later, she numbly stood from her bed minutes before she needed to leave for work. Having not moved for hours, the blood rushed to her head and she almost passed out. She was dehydrated and weak.

Walking into her bathroom, she stared at herself in the mirror and didn't even flinch at her crazed look. Her hair was frizzy, sticking out at all angles. Her lips were dry and chapped and she could hardly see through the puffiness of her eyelids. The bags under her eyes fell heavy into her cheeks. She looked grey. Peaky. She had forgotten to eat dinner and it looked like she would have to miss breakfast too. She didn't feel hungry anyway.

Crookshanks followed her and sat between her legs, meowing and nuzzling against his owner's calf. Despite the warmth her cat tried to provide for her, she still felt cold. Numb.

She spent several minutes perfecting glamor charms to her face and hair so she showed no signs of lack of sleep and excessive crying. She pointlessly tried to cast a charm on her scar, but it remained still and as apparent as ever. She fought the urge to paw at it again. Bright red streaks ran across the scar in all directions from her crazed scratching at it hours ago.

Walking into her closet, she lazily threw on a pair of work pants that sat high over her waist with a long-sleeved blouse tucked into them. She threw on a sleek red blazer for the sake of looking more put-together and professional. Maybe her clothes could distract others from looking at her face too closely and feed into the lie that Hermione Granger was okay.

She summoned food into her cat's bowl and after giving Crookshanks a pet, she Apparated to Flourish & Blotts. She stared at the front door and took a deep breath, preparing herself for the day ahead. She had 30 minutes before the store opened to get herself oriented and grounded.

She could handle this kind of work. It was much easier to ignore her problems when she was busy. It was easy to tap into her normal self when she wasn't thinking about her nightmares.

Hermione unlocked the door and entered the store. All seemed in place until she heard the whistle of swirling winds flowing through the room. She scanned the store and spotted a miniature storm arising from the historical fiction section. Wind and water circled the shelves like an orb.

"Again?" she complained as she reluctantly moved toward the storm, her hair billowing around her as she moved closer and closer to the source.

The chaos took her out of her mind completely and she was grateful.

"Is that the book with the killer seahorses and the hurricane again?" one of her staff asked with a groan, appearing at her side.

"Unfortunately." Hermione sighed. "Mind helping me out again, Oliver?"

The defective book was on the ground, overflowing with water from the pages. Wind and water circled around the book section like an orb and she and Oliver had to push themselves into the eye of the storm to reach the source, getting soaked as a result.

"Ready?" Hermione asked her employee.

He nodded and at the count of three, they both pointed their wands at the book and said, " _Ariditas!_ "

When the storm dried up, Oliver dived for the book just when it started thrashing and held it in place.

"Now!" he yelled. "And don't bloody miss this time, Hermione!"

"Ye of little faith," she teased. She pointed her wand at the book once more and said, " _Petrificus Totalus!_ "

The book froze and fell limply into Oliver's hands.

"I am going to murder Georgia Peaz's publishing team," Hermione seethed.

Astrid's hurried footsteps found them. "Another hurricane?"

"Another hurricane," Hermione and Oliver confirmed glumly.

"Oh, Georgia," Astrid huffed. She took the liberty of casting drying spells on her soaking wet coworkers.

After clearing away the water and drying up all the books damaged from the mini storm, the three of them continued to prepare for the store's opening.

Hermione went into her office and sent a strongly-worded letter to Georgia Peaz's publishing team outlining her refusal to sell her books until they fixed the storm issue she already had to remedy on three occasions.

She spent the next couple hours completing her administrative work speedily as to keep her mind occupied and moving. Her office was alive with a flurry of floating orders, papers, packages, and envelopes that she charmed to fold, pack, and seal themselves before flying through her door to the outgoing post. She was her own wizarding factory.

The rest of the day was not kind to her. Later, Astrid rushed into her office, dodging one of Hermione's envelopes flying itself out her door.

"Hermione…" Astrid approached unsurely. Hermione looked up at her and braced herself for bad news on this literal storm of a day. "There's a bit of uh… a _situation_ going on in Puzzles and Games."

"What kind of situation? A fight? Duel? Lost child? Don't tell me… people are shagging in Puzzles and Games?"

Astrid shook her head. "One of the sphinx riddles from that Egyptian-themed puzzle book – well… there is a tiny sandstorm and a small puddle of quicksand that a child's foot is stuck in."

Sometimes Hermione craved the simplicity of the Muggle world, where weather phenomena only happened outside via science rather than magical side effects from defective enchanted books.

She hurried to the floor and spotted the small crowd toward the front of the store. The "small" sandstorm Astrid originally described was quickly swirling larger and larger. The winds threw open the front door, sending wisps of sand outside on the street and making it known to all of Diagon Alley that something bizarre was happening in Flourish & Blotts. Sand scraped against her face and she closed her eyes with a hand up in front of her as she pushed through.

"Here you go, boss!" Oliver said, tapping her head with his wand. She heard a small pop! and a bubble formed around her head, effectively protecting her from the sand blowing in all directions. She aggressively wiped the debris from her eyes.

Hermione looked around and saw that he and another employee named Thomson had cast Bubble-Head Charms on every customer's head for safety. Bless their souls. What a quick-thinking staff she led.

She walked up to the poor crying child, who seemed about seven or eight, with his right ankle now submerged in the sand. The child's mother was frantically trying to pry her son's leg out of with her own hands.

" _Immobulus_ ," Hermione said calmly, pointing toward the quicksand. It stilled the effects of the sinking. She knelt down so she was level with the child and said gently, "I'm so sorry about this – I will get you fixed up in a minute. What's your name?"

"Robby," he said with a sniff and wiped the snot off his nose.

"Okay, Robby. I'll need to solve this before we'll all be free, okay? I won't let anything happen to you."

He nodded back at her through his Bubble-Head Charm with wide and shiny eyes.

"Please, Ms. Granger, help!" his mother begged, her face tensed in concern.

Hermione put a comforting hand on the mother's shoulder. "I will figure this out. Where is the book?"

The mother pointed to a mound of sand on the ground. Hermione reached into it and pulled out the puzzle book, shaking off sand from the pages.

She tried to drown out the whistling sounds of the wind and the concerned muttering of the customers watching as she hurriedly sifted through the pages for the Sphinx Riddle.

" _What goes on four feet in the morning, two feet at noon, and three feet in the evening?_ " she read aloud.

Hermione closed her eyes and tried to think in the midst of the chaos of a sandstorm in a bookstore. She could figure this out. If she could figure out Snape's riddle as a mere 11-year-old on the way to _Voldemort_ , she could solve anything in a crunch.

"Four feet in the morning… two feet… three feet…" she repeated again and again.

After over a minute of racking her brain with no success, she suddenly felt... warmth. Someone had appeared next to her.

"A _person_ , Granger, fucking hell," a familiar voice drawled. His voice sounded strangely clear in the midst of the wind and she straightened her back, feeling more alert.

She whipped her head toward Malfoy and before she wondered what in the living hell he was doing here – next to her – in Flourish & Blotts – in a miniature sandstorm – she absolutely _hated_ him for figuring this riddle out before her. _She_ was the brightest witch of her age, damn it!

"Walking on all fours at the beginning of your life, walking with two feet as a child and adult, and with a cane when you're old." He stared down at her through his own Bubble-Head Charm looking mighty pleased with himself.

Damn, he was right.

"What time is it?" she asked hastily. She spotted a watch on his left wrist and grabbed his arm with no warning. He instantly flinched out of her grasp – very dramatically, she would add – but she had already seen what she needed. "It's just past noon!"

"Two feet at noon," Draco repeated. "He'll need to put –"

"– both of his feet in the sand. I _know_ ," she said sharply. She did not like him telling her things she already knew.

She again bent down to the child's level and put on the most motherly and gentle voice she could muster. "Now this is going to sound kind of funny, but I need you to trust me, okay? I'm going to need you to put your other foot into the sand."

"W-what? Won't he sink?" the mother asked fearfully. Hermione noticed the wary and accusing look the mother sent toward Malfoy.

What on earth was that look for? She didn't actually expect that all this was Malfoy's fault, did she? No matter how much she bickered with him and called him names to his face, she never thought of him to be _dangerous_. It'd been four years for goodness sake!

"Trust me," Hermione assured her, catching the mother's gaze. "It's just a riddle."

The mother nodded and sent a cold sideways glance toward Malfoy before turning her attention to her son. "Okay, Robby, you heard her. Go ahead and put your other foot onto the sand. Hold onto my hand now."

Robby did as he was told and the quicksand instantly dried up, freeing his feet. The mother sighed in relief and hugged her son. Oliver swooped in at that moment to usher the mother and son to the back of the store where they had all the other customers gathered for safety, away from the commotion.

Hermione sighed. Now she just needed to quell this damn sandstorm.

She gasped softly when the storm abruptly stilled and the sand froze in place in midair.

"What is happening?" Malfoy said, sounding slightly alarmed.

The sand slowly began to move and gather together, sounding like static and broken pieces of glass toppling over one another. The sand assembled into a swirling and shaking ball before them. It increasingly blackened in color and stilled for a second before it started thrashing about the shelves of Puzzles and Games. Books and board games and puzzle pieces crashed to the floor in disarray. The crowd gasped and yelled, fearfully backing away from the ball. Malfoy and Hermione put out their Bubble-Head Charms.

Hermione could hear her employees instructing the customers to stay back. She looked back and made sure nobody else was within range. She expertly cast a protective ward around Puzzles and Games to effectively block them out as the dark orb thrashed about. The store around her and Malfoy blurred for a moment as the ward was set and then it was clear once more – perfect for the onlookers to see the show.

"I have no idea," she answered finally. "It must be another riddle." She cursed herself for losing her place and opened the riddle book in her hands once more, furiously flipping through the pages.

Hermione yelped when she found the riddle after the Sphinx one.

" _There are two sisters: one gives birth to the other and she, in turn, gives birth to the first. Who are the two sisters?_ "

"Granger!" Malfoy yelled. She looked up, eyes wide, and quickly threw herself in Malfoy's direction at the last second, her back crashing into his chest. He put both his hands at the sides of her arms to steady her and then flinched away. She looked at him quizzically. Hermione did not have time to dwell on his apparent disgust at her as the orb knocked over the puzzles on the shelf beside her.

"One gives birth to the other… gives birth to the first…" After a few moments, Hermione snapped her fingers in realization. "Night and day!"

"The ball is dark… like the night. It needs…." Malfoy started.

Their eyes quickly met and another wave of warmth filled her.

"Light!" they both yelled.

"Light and dark!" she said excitedly. She quickly pointed her wand at the ball of darkness and said, " _Lumos!_ " She sent a stream of light forward, but it only bounced off the darkness and dissipated. "Why—"

They threw themselves in opposite directions to dodge the darkness as it crashed into the shelf between them. She could hear people gasping worriedly outside her wards.

" _Two_ sisters, Granger," Malfoy said. "It needs two people."

Hermione hated how helpful he was. She briefly wondered if this was how it would've been like to fight beside him during the war. In a different world, he may have been awfully useful in finding the Horcruxes. It was rather exhausting being the most logical one in the group.

She nodded and they both pointed their wands toward the constantly moving darkness.

"Your aim better be impeccable, Granger," Malfoy teased. She glared back at him.

"I'll count to three," Hermione said. "One… two… _Lumos!_ "

" _Lumos!_ " Draco said a second too late.

Hermione's light bounced and extinguished again as Malfoy's did the same shortly after hers. She glared at him. "Can you count, Malfoy?"

" _On_ three or after three?"

"Honestly, Malfoy – _on_ three, obviously! Watch out!"

He narrowly dodged the darkness as he crashed into her again. Hermione decided to flinch away for him – save him the trouble.

"How was I supposed to know? It's not like you _clarified_ –"

"Oh, for goodness sake –"

"It's called _communication_ , Granger –"

Hermione yelped in surprise as she grabbed Malfoy's arm and roughly moved them both aside. The orb crashed into the shelf across from them, knocking down cases of Wizard's Chess.

He, again, immediately pulled his arm back. Why was he so repulsed by her?

" _On_ three, Malfoy!"

"Fine," he said, pointing his wand at the darkness once more.

"One… two…"

" _Lumos!_ " they said together, the lights from their wands hitting the darkness simultaneously. When their streams of light made contact with the orb, all movement stopped. Everyone stared at the still sight before them, impatiently waiting for something to happen.

Then, the light sounded a small ringing noise as it increased in size. It overpowered the dark and everyone squinted as they watched the ball glow brighter and brighter before it abruptly disappeared with a loud _CRACK_.

Malfoy and Hermione both sighed in relief and looked at one another. Before she could think too much about her words, she said, "If you weren't such a prat all throughout school, we could've used you on our side during the war, you know."

Hermione didn't know how to decipher the look on his face. He didn't smile, but he looked more… colorful somehow. Like more life had just been breathed into him.

He didn't say anything as she turned away from him and took down the protective ward. The customers clapped and cheered from the back of the store. Oliver and Thomson rushed over and began helping Hermione and Malfoy clean the puzzles and games off the ground.

"What a team!" Thomson said, clapping both Hermione and Malfoy on the back.

Hermione's face scrunched at the thought of being on a team with Malfoy because _Gryffindor vs. Slytherin until the end of time._

She pointed intimidatingly at Thomson. "We were _never_ part of the same team—"

"Clearly. Being part of a team would entail effective _communication_ —"

"I said I'd count to three!"

"Yes, _to_ three suggests actually counting the number three," Malfoy said.

"I'm on his side for this one, Hermione," Oliver said apologetically.

"Don't start otherwise I'll drown you in Peaz's book," she said to him warningly.

Astrid carefully appeared before them – the same way she walked into Hermione's office minutes ago to inform her of the sandstorm. She looked rather damp. Hermione didn't like that.

"Umm… speaking of Peaz's book…" Astrid said, biting her lip unsurely.

"What now?" Hermione asked worriedly.

"I don't think they particularly liked your… letter." Astrid held up a very wet piece of parchment with Hermione's angry scribbling bleeding together. "The entire back rooms is a hurricane."

"What kind of bookshop are you running, Granger?" Malfoy asked incredulously.

"You two, Mr. and Mrs. 'We Work Well Together, But Aren't On the Same Team,'" Thomson said, pointing at Hermione and Malfoy "—you go ahead. I think I'd rather handle dry torn-up books than whatever she's talking about."

Hermione groaned and moved toward the back offices, sand tangled in her hair falling to the floor after each step. She heard Malfoy's footsteps following her and she turned to face him abruptly. He almost bumped into her and very hastily stepped a foot back. Because what an absolute horror it would be to make any contact with her.

"You can leave, you know," she said, crossing her arms. "I didn't ask you to come."

"You also didn't ask me to leave," he retorted. Touché. "I'm too invested now anyway, Granger. Besides, how would you ever solve another riddle without me?"

She blushed. "I was _just_ about to solve the Sphinx Riddle right when you appeared—" She shook her head, putting herself back in focus. "What are you even doing here, Malfoy?"

"Didn't end up liking the tie I chose the other day. I left Malkin's and saw all this sand blowing out from here and I thought, _Wow, I wonder how badly Granger fucked up._ And then I saved your store."

She felt her hair frizz in rage. "You most certainly did not _save_ —"

Hermione closed her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose for a moment, then looked over at Malfoy. She didn't want to admit out loud that he had been much more helpful than anyone in her staff would've been in solving the sandstorm issue. She didn't want to acknowledge that when she had cast the wards around Puzzles and Games, she didn't think twice when she kept Malfoy in the wards with her. It simply made sense for him to be there and fight that ball of darkness alongside her. She begrudgingly reminded herself that he fell very closely behind her in marks and there were occasions he figured things out before her.

There was a hurricane that needed to be remedied – this was not the time for pride to overshadow logic.

"Make yourself useful then," she said, turning on her heel and walking toward the door. "Oh, god…"

Water flowed out through the crack under the door. She could hear the whirring sounds of the wind and what sounded like ocean waves crashing against rocks in the sea.

"Alright," Hermione said after a long breath. "I'll cast a shield charm as we walk in so the water doesn't come through the store. Once we see what we're working with inside, I'll have more of a plan."

She was relieved to see Malfoy nod and not argue. Very good.

" _Protego!_ " she said, holding the shield charm in front of her as she opened the door. She braced herself as waves immediately crashed against her shield. She embarrassingly stumbled a step back, but Malfoy steadied her by the shoulders from behind. She fought back a shudder when he released her. "Follow behind me."

They shut the door quickly. The water reached Hermione's thighs.

Both of them stared agape at the sight before them. Hermione almost burst out laughing at the sheer nonsense of this day.

Several of Georgia Peaz's books floated from the ceiling, raging streams of water pouring out of them. A storm cloud much larger than the one from this morning swirled about the hallway and offices, hinges creaking as the doors thudded against the walls. The backstock of books were all soaked through and the water flooded her office in disarray. Tall shelves that once stood up and were neatly organized with books had fallen, ebbing and flowing along the waves. Dozens of books floated atop the unstable waters.

Hermione was already soaked. The strong winds had her wet hair blowing around her face like whips.

And then Malfoy yelled into the storm, "Who the hell did you piss off, Granger?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> listen, if _A Monster Book of Monsters_ was a thing, who's to say books can't accidentally produce hurricanes and sandstorms? riddles are courtesy of google, and the "on three or after three" bit was from _Pitch Perfect_. please leave kudos/comments if you'd like :) hope you enjoyed!


	4. Different Dimensions & Broken Bones

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sometimes i read through these chapters before i post them, thinking i've done it enough and no, there can't be anything else i want to change or add! and then i accidentally write 1,000 more words. anyway, here we go with some more draco pov!

_She was already soaked. The strong winds had her wet hair blowing around her face like whips._

_And then Malfoy yelled into the storm, "Who the hell did you piss off, Granger?"_

* * *

"First of all, they pissed me off first," Granger yelled back at him matter-of-factly. "Second, I've pissed off many people, Malfoy. You're no stranger to this."

No, he wasn't. He wasn't sure if she had ever stopped pissing him off since they first met.

"And do they always send you hurricanes in response?"

"Nope, first time. I personally prefer death threats," she said with a shrug, as if she were talking about the weather – _normal_ weather at least.

Draco almost laughed. He was no stranger to death threats.

He watched Granger scan the area before her and could almost see the gears working in her mind, creating a plan. She always furrowed her brow and bit at her lip when she focused on solving a problem before her — he wondered how she never made it bleed. Also, _when_ the fuck did he ever notice that? He didn't remember that knowledge being consciously stored…

Everything about Granger felt blurry and distant, but as he watched her today, he started to remember… little things. Like a camera lens being refocused. The memories were _there_ , but he couldn't quite focus on the details – the parts that made the picture come alive.

Granger pointed at a swirling vortex of wind toward the very back of the room.

"There!" she yelled through the roaring winds. "We have to make it back there and then I'll do with it what I did earlier."

"You mean this has happened _before_?" Draco asked in disbelief. What the hell kind of bookshop was this?

"Hasn't been the best day, Malfoy," she said with a sigh. "No need to rub it in."

He absolutely planned on rubbing it in.

"Off you go then," he said. He gestured forward and pointed his wand to nonverbally part the water, forming a straight path to the vortex.

Granger turned and glanced back at him, looking slightly astonished at his magical ability, but quickly masked it as she started going down the path. Pride filled Draco. Knowing something Granger didn't know felt just as good now as it did at Hogwarts.

*

_At 13-years-old, Draco promised himself he would be smarter than Hermione Granger. He couldn't have a mudblood like her ahead in marks! His family told him people like her were scum! But then why did she have the best grades in their class every year? It didn't make any sense._

_It was disgusting the way she constantly shot her hand up in class, even in Snape's, where her participation was never welcomed. As idiotic as she was for doing this, he still wondered what it was like to say what was right even when the situation didn't warrant it — even though it would be easier if she just stayed quiet._

_Occasionally, when he answered a question correctly that nobody else in the class knew except for her, she would cast him a confused look so quickly that he wondered if he imagined it. He felt pride whenever she shot these looks at him. And then he wondered — when the hell did he start trying to impress the mudblood? But he was just fulfilling a promise to himself, right? He just wanted to be better than her?_

_In their third year, Snape asked their class, "What can dittany be used for?"_

_Without bothering to raise his hand, Draco said, "It can help heal deep wounds."_

_Granger's angry and surprised eyes landed on him very quickly. He smirked at her and she huffed, slouching in her seat._

_"Thank you, Mr. Malfoy," Snape drawled. "Ten points to Slytherin."_

_This didn't get old. Whether he admitted it to himself or not, he may have studied harder all those years just to get those looks from her._

_In their sixth year, Slughorn asked, "What potion is gurdyroot used in?"_

_He sat next to her in Potions that day. She scribbled furiously with the quill in her right hand and held the paper down with her left. Her elbow occasionally brushed his while taking notes. He had told her off many times for doing this and she never fucking listened and he was too prideful to change his ways._

_Draco, who believed he was above raising his hand like a plebian, answered, "Amortentia."_

_In the corner of his eye, he saw her turn her head with an angry expression on her face. His stomach jumped. This happened every time. He didn't know what that was about._

_"And what is Amortentia?" Slughorn asked._

_"The most powerful love potion in the world," Granger answered. He could almost hear her thoughts,_ If he doesn't need to raise his hand, then I don't either.

_"Very good! Ten points to each of you!" Slughorn said excitedly. He turned his back and began writing notes onto the chalkboard._

_Granger hurriedly began writing again, bumping his elbow. He couldn't tell if she did this on purpose anymore. She never showed any indication that she realized she made contact with him for half a moment._

_"No love potion in the world is powerful enough to make someone love_ you _, Granger," he said just loud enough so she could hear. He turned his head to the side to watch her reaction._

_Her spine straightened, lips pursed, and cheeks tinted pink as she continued to face Slughorn. Classic._

_"You better watch your mouth," she said._

_Draco watched hers as she spoke._

_"Or what, Granger?"_

_She turned to face him and smirked, and he swallowed a lump that suddenly formed in his throat at the sight._

_"Or I may accidentally spike your food with love potion. How much would being all over a mudblood ruin your reputation? How much of an absolute joke would you be if a scummy mudblood like_ me _turned you down?"_

_He almost flinched at her word choice. He didn't like it when she used the term on herself. He didn't even like it when others in his own house called her that either. He felt almost protective of the horrible word when it came to Granger. He wanted to be the only one to use it because he was the only one who didn't mean it._

_This would indeed ruin his reputation and be incredibly humiliating and would possibly lead to her being murdered by his father and the Dark Lord. But she wouldn't. And now he was wondering what him being "all over" her looked like. And felt like._

_Fuck._

_"Well, Granger, if you wanted to know what that would be like so badly –" The words tumbled through his smirk before he could think "—all you have to do is ask, mudblood."_

_He turned his head to face forward again. He didn't want to see the look on her face._

_"You are a foul_ pig _, Malfoy," she spat._

_Luckily, Slughorn started talking again and he pretended to focus on the lecture. But he could feel her curiosity. Her lingering look. He could always fucking feel her._

__

*

The wind grew stronger as they approached the source and Granger again cast an impressively strong shield charm to keep wind and water from blowing against their faces. They halted their steps when they reached the vortex and Draco watched her stare before them thoughtfully.  
Somehow, he knew she'd bring a finger to her chin – like the textbook picture of somebody deep in thought – wondering how to go about the next step.

Her shoulder slid across his chest as she turned her body toward him. He quickly took a step back, but he was still close enough to see the rain-soaked curls stuck to her forehead. He thought about how very strange it was to see her hair so weighed down.

"I'm going to have to let down the shield charm. When I do that, we both need to cast a powerful drying spell on it. It's not the same one you'd use for the typical spill or wet clothes. The incantation is—"

" _Ariditas_ ," Draco interrupted, rolling his eyes. He relished at her surprised expression and felt pride bubble in his chest again. "Give me some credit, Granger. You're really insulting my intelligence now."

Despite the frigid water exacerbated by the high winds, he could still feel the warmth of her body so close to his. He watched her cheeks flare.

"Must you be so snarky, Malfoy? I was only making sure!"

Did they _really_ need to argue with one another in the middle of a hurricane? No, but if they didn't, the world would surely close in on itself.

"I'm not Potter or Weasley, Granger. No need to feed me any test answers."

"I did _not_ – ugh! Just – this isn't over, Malfoy!" she warned, glaring up at him with the force of somebody much taller than her. "Once we've dried up the storm, the book will start thrashing and come for either one of us. Whoever it flies toward needs to grab it and the other petrifies it. _Don't_ stun it – it gets temperamental."

“So bossy,” he commented just to piss her off. He succeeded.

"On three," she said a little _too_ clearly.

"Your communication has really improved in the last thirty minutes, Granger. I'm truly touched to have taught the Brightest Witch of Our Age some common decency and social skills."

He wondered if anyone else could piss off Hermione Granger and make her cheeks pink and nostrils flare as often as he did. This image of her angrily looking at him flashed through his mind in dozens of different settings all over Hogwarts. Classrooms. Hagrid's Hut. Great Hall. Forbidden Forest. Greenhouses. Hallways. Hospital Wing. Library. Great Lake.

Did he really manage to piss her off everywhere in Hogwarts? Impressive. Now he had to christen all of Diagon Alley with her rage.

She opened her mouth ready to argue back, but decided against it and turned away from him again defeatedly. He smirked and held out his wand from behind her, his arm brushing the side of her face.

"One –" Draco started. At her disbelieving look over her shoulder, he said, "Do you have to start the count _every_ time? Get over yourself. Now – one… two… _Ariditas_!"

Yellow sparks flowed from each of their wands. Their combined magic effectively hit the vortex and dried up the storm, immediately halting the rain and the wind. Still floating, the book snapped shut. Draco and Granger both walked a few steps away from each other to prepare for the next move. 

Several seconds passed as they stared at the suspended novel expectantly with their wands drawn.

Then the book started to vibrate with magic, angry red and orange sparks emitting from the pages. Granger let out a yelp as the very angry book flew violently toward her and crashed into her chest, sending her back smashing against a wall.

Granger managed to fit her small hands on both sides of the book, holding the pages shut with difficulty. Her body contorted to manage the thrashing and her steps staggered in all directions trying to keep herself balanced and the book maintained.

Draco approached her and kept his wand outstretched with his eyes straight onto the book, like a Seeker narrowing his eyes to the Snitch.

"If you miss, Malfoy—" her strained voice started.

He smirked at her before he both lazily and confidently said, " _Petrificus Totalus._ "

Granger let out a sigh of relief as the book fell limp in her hands.

"What was that about me missing?"

She rolled her eyes. "If you petrified me, I would have killed you."

"If _I_ couldn't even kill anyone, Granger, then neither could you."

His chest nervously fluttered at the joke that fell too easily from his mouth. It was a _joke_. Surely, by now, she could poke fun and laugh about it all like he and his own friends do? He anxiously waited for her response and hoped she would get the humor and not make it weird.

Her shoulders relaxed and the corner of her lip quirked up for a moment. His chest eased. This opened up an entire arsenal of war-related wit and humor he could feed from for the foreseeable future. He had enough material to argue with Granger for at least fifty more years.

"Either make yourself useful and help me put out all these other godforsaken books, or leave," she said, the bite in her voice gone. He quickly glanced around the room and counted five books floating at the ceiling, steady streams of water spilling from the pages.

"Which one’s next, Granger?"

The rest weren't as violent as the first. Each of them managed to catch each book easily after drying them. Every single time, one would halfheartedly warn the other not to miss even though they both seemed to trust that they wouldn’t.

It was a strange form of trust masked in apparent mistrust.

When they finished, Draco remembered that he was cold, that they were both still very wet, and the water was still at his waist. How did she plan on getting rid of all this water?

He looked over at Granger who had twisted her mouth slightly to one side with her knuckle at her chin, thinking.

A sudden onslaught of all the times he caught Granger simply _thinking_ washed over him. Fucking hell, this was weird. The overall picture of her in his mind started to focus in a little bit more.

He watched as her eyes brightened and hand left her chin. She figured it out.

Granger grabbed a black thermos that had floated in front of her and poured out the remainder of the coffee. She walked over to Draco and placed the thermos on a desk between them looking almost _excited_.

"Bring all the water into here," she instructed after casting a spell he didn't recognize. She met his eyes again.

Draco raised a brow and asked, "All of it?"

"Trust me."

He shrugged. "If this doesn't work, Granger, I'll be embarrassed for you."

Trust disguised as mistrust.

They both used their wands to move a river's worth of water into the thermos and soon enough they were able to see the floor and the bottom half of their bodies.

Granger capped the thermos and tapped it with her wand. She looked over at him and gestured toward the cup.

"Go on," she said self-assuredly.

He picked it up. It was light. He took off the cap. Empty. Fuck. That was impressive.

"What the hell was that?" Draco asked.

"Undetectable Extension Charm," she said with a shrug. As if this weren't highly advanced magic. Not a big deal.

Draco dried them both with a spell, and he didn't miss the curious look she gave him – shocked again that he would do such a nice, simple thing for her. Despite the fact that he had been helping her defeat inclement weather for the past hour.

An image of Granger in their fourth year surfaced. Krum had just swum her to the surface after the Second Task. People piled towels and blankets around her shoulders. Krum took out his wand and cast a drying spell. Her hair frizzed. She was shivering and didn't even thank the literal Quidditch star who saved her from merepeople in a river the Giant Squid lived in. She only excitedly looked around to see if her best friends had made it out. Theo made a comment about her hair. Blaise mentioned losing respect for Krum for thinking the _mudblood_ was important. Then, Draco thought – if an international Quidditch player they all worshipped found Hermione _mudblood_ Granger important – what were the rest of them missing?

Granger looked unhappily at the mess before her. Her shoulders slumped and she let out a deep breath. She looked so tired.

"How did you learn how to do that?" Oh, sod it. He was fucking impressed! It was difficult magic to cast an extension charm to fit all that water in such a small space. He tried mastering the spell himself and it was easier to cast it in spaces much larger than a 12-ounce _thermos_. The tents at the Quidditch World Cup were charmed with the spell, but that was due to the work of several professional Ministry officials. Not a single petite, apparently exhausted person.

"How did you learn how to part the water?" she asked him, her eyes shining in curiosity.

He felt pride well up in him again. He never experienced Granger ask him how he did something.

"My family would vacation in France each summer," he said. He could almost feel the warmth of the sun on his skin. "When I went to the beach, I learned how to part small sections of water because I wanted to pick up the shells on the ocean floor."

That felt like a lifetime ago.

"I used the Undetectable Extension Charm on my bag during the war."

She learned how to do _this_ to something as small as a _bag_ when they were seventeen?

"Clever," was all he said. Like a passing thought.

Three of her employees walked into the room – the same ones he had spoken to briefly out on the floor. One of the guys had curly blonde hair, some of the curls wisping across his forehead. The other bloke was taller than him – darker-skinned with short black hair that looked a bit windswept from the natural disaster outside. The girl was petite with olive skin and long brown hair with bangs. They all seemed friendly enough, but he still didn't know them and this made him feel on edge.

"Who's on the floor?" Granger asked them.

"Camelia and Arian just came in for their shifts," the girl said. "I told them to work out there as we fixed everything up in here."

Without needing to be prompted, Granger's staff dispersed about the room to begin the cleanup.

"You can leave, Malfoy," Granger said again from beside him. He didn't want to. For some reason. "No one's asking you to stay."

_Then ask me to stay._

"Oh, _that's_ who you are!" the blonde bloke said. "I thought you looked familiar, but you know… hard to tell in a sandstorm." He walked over to him and held out a hand. "Thomson. Thomson Oxley."

Draco suddenly felt uncomfortable. As far as he was concerned, there were only two types of people: those who hated him and those who thought he was "okay now." He didn't know what these people thought. He honestly also didn't know what Granger thought. He always wanted to know what she thought.

"Pleasure," Draco said cordially, shaking his hand.

"Oliver Hopsky," the brown-haired boy yelled from the other side of the room, sending over a wave.

"Astrid Bailey," the girl said, blushing and failing to meet his eyes through her bangs.

"You could learn something from them," Draco said, pointedly looking at Granger. "Perfectly cordial and respectful greetings. No snappy comments or—" He gestured toward her entire being "— _fuming_ Granger yelling about tie choices and criticizing my ice cream."

"Well, _they_ weren't at the mercy of your constant turmoil for their entire adolescence, so I don't think it's comparable."

Draco was very well aware that her employees avidly watched them bicker like schoolchildren, but he didn't care. Ignoring her words permitting him to leave, he began floating bookshelves to sit upright.

"Ah, but they were almost at the mercy of my bad decisions, weren't they? I accomplished some of the most fucked up things when we were sixteen that changed the course of the war. Haven't you heard?"

She froze and met his eyes with an almost worried, but imploring look.

_Come on, Granger,_ he thought. If he could joke about failing to kill Dumbledore, she could handle this.

Then he saw her shoulders relax. "Are you talking about the time you almost murdered our classmate or poisoned my ex-boyfriend?"

Her employees stopped what they were doing at their words and dropped their jaws in shock. Draco actually laughed. She stared at him thoughtfully before turning away from him and levitating a shelf upright.

Draco started working on a shelf stuck diagonally between a door frame.

"No, I was more thinking about the time I repaired a centuries-old Vanishing Cabinet and let a bunch of murderers into our school," he continued as if he were ordering a dish at a restaurant. They looked over at one another at that point. Granger was drying a book in her hands.

Granger waved her hand side to side, as if swatting away a bug. "Oh, whatever. Water under the bridge. I guess you made up for it by accidentally making yourself the rightful owner of the Elder Wand."

"I could hardly take credit for that one, but no problem."

"Suit yourself."

He could _feel_ both of them avoiding the events at the Manor. He felt the memories wrap around his neck, wanting to be surfaced.

He continued to struggle with the bookshelf wedged tightly between her office doorframe.

"Who the fuck thought it was a good idea for a bunch of teenagers have so much say in the outcome of this historical war?"

Thomson appeared behind Granger, easily slipping a book two shelves above her head.

"You lot are off your rocker joking about shit like that," Thomson joked, shaking his head. "But let me take this time to congratulate you both for saving the fucking world." He rubbed at Granger's head playfully, messing up her hair more than it already was. She laughed and swatted his hand away.  
Draco's jaw clenched.

And then a loud _THUD_. He cursed out pain when he crushed his hand between the shelf and the doorframe. His bones crushed and broke like glass and blood rushed to his head in pain and panic. He vaguely heard everyone in the room ask if he was okay, but he was in too much pain to respond.

Granger appeared in front of him. She shrunk the bookcase and freed his hand. He sucked in a pained breath and felt stupid for not thinking of that.

His hand looked mangled and broken and he scrunched his face uncomfortably at the sight. His hand was throbbing and pulsating in sharp pain like knives through his palms and fingers.

"It's broken," she said dumbly.

He actually felt angry. This was _Hermione Granger_ and _that_ was all she had to say? The obvious?

"No _shit_ , Granger," he said through gritted teeth. "Know any fucking healing spells?"

"A few," she said, not at all feeding off his unnecessary cursing. "Let me see it."

She reached out to touch his hand and he was so taken aback that he flinched away, groaning in pain as the bones rattling in his hand shot pain up his arm.

Granger looked almost hurt and then frustrated. What did he do? What was she thinking?

"I get that the idea of making _any_ contact with me is apparently repulsive, but if you want me to heal your hand, I'm going to need to touch you," she snapped, looking up at him.

She thought he was _repulsed_ by her touch? He guessed he couldn't blame her for all the silly ways he flinched away from her today as if she had cooties. But in reality, he was afraid of her touch. Too aware of it to the point of exhaustion. In the very few instances where they had any direct contact, he _felt_ it.

He forgot about this feeling. He forgot about the nervousness and guilt he felt around her. For four years, he only saw her in the papers and she was so… far away. Even at Hogwarts, she was far from reach — in a different world. Granger herself was incredibly human — he knew that. 

He _saw_ her. He saw her tears, anger, and hurt. He saw her happy and scared and determined. Granger was the most human person he had ever met.

But imagining being on their side _with_ her was just that — imaginary. A thought he had to squash. It was like they were in entirely different dimensions. The thought of even being civil with her was like a ghost. You could see and talk to ghosts, but you could never be with one because ghosts — they were in a different dimension. Within reach, but so far away. Impossible.

She held his gaze for a few seconds and he gave in. "Go on then," he said coolly.

She slowly moved her hand to his wrist and grasped it lightly so he'd keep still. His heart pounded in his chest.

Draco stared at her as she worked to mend the bones in his right hand. She looked so focused and determined, as if she were taking an exam at school. The gentle way she handled him in this moment was so different than the snappy way she spoke to him their whole lives.

"Since when did you know healing spells?" Draco asked as she stayed focused.

"I taught myself some during the war. I can heal broken bones, sprains, and deep gashes in the skin quite successfully. I figured those would be the most important during that time." She said all this lightly, as if she were making polite small talk with an acquaintance rather than her schooltime bully.

A few smaller bones snapped into place and he cursed in pain.

"Holy _shit_ , Granger!" Draco yelled. He almost swiped his hand away, but she tightened her grip on his wrist. He fought the urge to flinch away.

"Stop being a baby," she snapped. "I'm sure you've dealt with worse."

He swore he could feel the tinge of the Cruciatus Curse in his body.

"Just because I've been through worse doesn't mean mending bones doesn't still _hurt_. Damn, Granger, way to invalidate my poor little feelings."

"You're neither poor nor little, Malfoy. Save the dramatics for the papers," she shot back. "You've got quite a few more I need to snap into place. Do you want me to tell you when I do it or just do it?"

"Tell me when," he said. He hated surprises.

"Okay, I'll count to three."

"Wait, wait, Granger," Draco said. " _On_ three or after?"

He saw the ghost of a smile on her face and then she glared weakly.

" _On_ three, Malfoy, my goodness," she said, rolling her eyes. "One… two… _three_."

She did this two more times and each time Draco groaned painfully.

And then she started moving her thumb lightly around Draco's palm, surveying and squeezing lightly in one area at a time. His hand twitched painfully when she squeezed a bone below his index finger. She moved her wand around it and when the spell took its course, she lightly squeezed it again. No pain.

Fuck the broken bones. Her featherlight touches would be the death of him.

Watching her heal him was a strangely pleasant and peaceful sight. He thought of his trial and how calm and confident she appeared defending him at the stand. That was the last time he saw her. They didn't speak after. And now, just like school, they so easily fell back into their old rhythm, conveniently ignoring how life-changing of an event it was for him.

One more spell later, Granger let go of his hand, his palm feeling tingly and warm. From the healing spells, obviously.

"Done," she said.

He examined his hand as if it were his first time seeing it. It didn't hurt at all. He, again, was impressed.

Endlessly impressed by her.

Now he had to go before he broke some other bones for being jealous of how easily others could innocently touch Granger.

"Maybe a broken hand is my cue to leave," Draco said and then he started to turn toward the door.

"What, no 'thank you'? I just healed your broken hand, Malfoy."

"Are you going to scold me for not having manners like my mother? And if we're talking about manners, how about the fact that I helped you solve the riddle and defeat that _ball_ of darkness without even a small _expression_ of thanks?"

"I didn't need your help! I didn't ask for it!"

"Yet you accepted it and let me stay in your wards."

"There was no time to not accept it!"

Here they went. Like normal. Like muscle memory.

"For the love of _god_ , Granger, grow up!"

" _Me_ grow up? How much have you grown over the last four years, Malfoy? How hard have you been trying to use money to buy the public's favor? How much money do you think you need to spend to redeem yourself?"

A weight crushed his chest and fell to his stomach. Was this what she really thought of him? What the fuck was she playing it? Nobody defended somebody like she did at his trial and got to regress that far in her opinions of him. He wasn't the only one who saw her — _she_ saw _him_ too, and she still believed this about him? She felt so fucking far away.

He clenched his fists and heard his heart beat in his chest in anger.

"You have me all figured out then, don't you, Granger?" he asked, almost laughing at her self-assuredness. "And here I thought we'd finally not be at each other's' throats, but I guess old habits die hard, don't they?"

"I've had you figured out since we were eleven, Malfoy. You donate to all these charities that you know bollocks about—"

He suspected this was about the recovery program that both of them contributed to — one anonymously and one publicly.

"I did my research, Granger," he said darkly. He did not need her questioning the integrity of his donations. He did not need her questioning his character. "And _maybe_ we both had different things to prove when we contributed to the same cause."

She froze. Now he had her. "What are you talking about?" she said meekly.

Why was this so personal to her?

"You know what I'm talking about," he said, looking her straight in the eye.  
She saw the puzzle connect in her fucking open-book eyes. She stalked up to him. "You have _no right_ to talk about things you don't understand. You—"

"I don't need to learn another life lesson, Granger. I think both of us learned enough of those from the war, don't you think?" he said seriously, trying to keep the dark memories at bay.

He saw red in his mind's eye. He saw flashes of blood, of the war, of death, and seeing _her_ — right there — as she was tortured in his drawing room. And then he refocused his eyes on her. She looked blank, as if she were having the same flashes too. He watched everything play out in her eyes. Her face was still stoic, fierce, but her eyes were vulnerable, still fearful.

_What else happened to you, Granger?_ he thought to himself.

"I don't think either of us have the other _figured out_ at this point, Granger. It's been four years, and four years moves much slower when you're picking up the pieces of what we went through," he said. She looked at him with an expression he couldn't decipher. Tired? Exasperated? Sick of his shit? "We were on different sides, but we ended up on the same one. And when it mattered, you helped me just as much as I helped you."

His words hung between them like a thick fog.

"Our four years moved in dog years, didn't it?" she said absentmindedly.

"Dog years?" he asked, taken aback at the change in subject.

"One dog year is seven human years, supposedly," she reiterated. "It's only been four years, but it feels so much longer."

He didn't understand how Granger's brain worked and how she was processing their previously heated conversation. But something about it felt familiar – it felt like what _he_ did himself when his emotions didn't serve a purpose. When something hit too close to home, she seemed to put it in a thought that felt less threatening. It reminded him of the Occlumency he practiced his sixth and seventh years. When he felt an emotion too strong — one that Voldemort could prey on — Snape taught him to put it somewhere it made more sense. Move it to another room in his mind.

He had a hell of a fucking time unraveling this room during treatment with his trusty therapist.

"So you mean 28 bloody years later, and you _still_ haven't found a way to spare your old school nemesis?"

The corner of her lip quirked, almost to a smile. He felt a fraction of the weight in his chest lift at the sight.

"So 28 years later and you're still an incorrigible ferret?"

"Ferret? Was that a pet name? That's strange," Astrid spoke suddenly. They both jumped, just now remembering there were other people in the room.

" _Pet_ name? What are you—" Granger started, her cheeks flushing.

"Did you guys not date in school or something?" Astrid said, slowly moving behind a shelf to shield herself from her boss's impending gaze.

Granger looked about ready to explode. Draco found it quite amusing.

"What a thought, eh, Granger? I'm sure you've thought of it at least once." Apparently, he was in the mood to play with fire.

She scowled. "Only in your nightmares, Malfoy."

"You mean I wasn't charming when I repeatedly called you prejudiced slurs and publicly wished you were dead?"

Her sudden laugh filled his chest with light. And then she clasped her mouth shut and bit her lip uncomfortably after realizing what she had just done.

" _Right_. Pureblood. Muggleborn. The Malfoys. sense," Astrid said, putting it together finally. "It's just… the _tension_ —"

"You've got a death wish," Oliver warned her, looking very amused by Granger's defensiveness. Astrid shrugged, having accepted her fate.

"Are you both always like this?" Thomson asked with a pleased smile as he dried off books and levitated them onto the appropriate shelves.

"Sadly, yes," Granger answered him. "If only he wasn't always trying to pick a fight."

_Only with you, Granger._

"Didn't you vouch for him at his trial?" Oliver asked curiously, peering at them between newly-dried books.

Draco took pleasure in the way Granger pursed her lips in discomfort. He was grateful for this Oliver bloke for bringing up the memory that changed his life and was apparently taboo for the two of them to talk about.

"Yes, Granger," Draco said, crossing his arms and leaning on a shelf across from her, looking much too satisfied. "Didn't you?"

"Just because we fight doesn't mean I think you deserve life in Azkaban," she said, her voice sounding far away, back in time. "You're _welcome_ , by the way."

He could thank her a thousand times and it would never be enough.

"Just another Hermione Granger charity project, right?"

She turned and glared at him. " _You can leave now, Malfoy_ ," she said, emphasizing every word.

"Duly noted, Granger." He turned toward her employees. "Pleasure meeting you all."

They shouted out their friendly goodbyes as he headed toward the door. When he entered the main floor again, he was surprised to see that everything continued on as normal. As if there hadn't just been a sandstorm, quicksand, a ball of darkness, and hurricane. As he made his way toward the exit, he fought the urge to stop and browse through the shelves. He couldn't stay here any longer.

He heard her light and hurried footsteps behind him — he didn't quite know _why_ he knew it was her — and he turned. She bumped into him and feeling like he needed to redeem himself by not seeming repulsed by the contact, he steadied her by her elbow with the hand she just healed. He felt it almost burn at the contact. Left over tingling from the healing magic, obviously. She was the one  
who flinched away this time.

"Malfoy."

"Granger."

"I'm letting you have any book you want for free," she said, her voice sounding almost strained from having to be gracious to him.

He was genuinely surprised. He also felt very warm inside.

"What's that first book in the series you talked about in that article from the _Prophet_ yesterday?"

Her eyes widened in surprise and he could see her struggle to appear unphased. "You saw that article?"

"I was bored and flipping through the papers to find anything interesting," he said, trying to sound as aloof as possible.

"So I'm interesting now?" she said, raising her eyebrow quizzically.

_You're always the most interesting part of the paper,_ he wanted to tell her.

"You have and always will be a walking textbook, Granger. Don't delude yourself," he said instead. She gestured for him to follow her and she walked him to a shelf of best-sellers. She pulled out a book the first book in the series she had mentioned and shoved it into his chest dramatically.

"There," she said. "My debt is repaid."

Customers started to notice that both _the_ Draco Malfoy and Hermione Granger were conversing in the store and began to stare. He grew relatively used to this attention in public places, but it was still weird.

"See you later, Granger," he said shortly as he headed toward the door.

"Now hold on right there, Malfoy." She stopped him just before he went out the door. Now all the employees and some customers watched them interact.

"You just scolded me for not saying 'thank you' and now, _you_ can't even take your own advice and show any gratitude to me for mending your broken hand and letting you have a book for free?"

"You know, _Granger_ , I didn't exactly hear a 'thank you' from you either. I helped you with your little natural disasters and broke my hand in the process."  
She took a deep breath. "Well, let the record show, that I, Hermione Granger, was the bigger person in this exchange," she said through gritted teeth, straightening her posture and lifting her chin up importantly.

_Fucking adorable._

She opened the front door to let him out. "Thank you, Malfoy."

He raised an eyebrow. "I never thought I'd ever hear you thank me in my life. That's a new one."

Granger rolled her eyes. "Get out of here. I'm starting to think you're enjoying the company of the girl who punched you in the face and broke your nose."

_"Did she really do that?"_ somebody in the crowd whispered. _"That's incredible!"_  
Then he laughed. Genuinely. She stared at him, as if wondering whether she was in an alternate universe or not.

"And I'm starting to think you like breaking my bones," he shot back with a smirk. "See you soon."

She looked alarmed. "What, you're going to come back and try breaking your other hand?"

"I can't imagine your _third_ first impression being worse than this one. Though I think I did like this one better than your _first_ first impression – much more exciting, I think."

She rolled her eyes. "Oh, please."

"Please? That's definitely a new one. What a day. I'm charmed, really," he said sarcastically.

"Malfoy, you better leave this store now or I'll hex you out this door and ban you from this establishment."

"Threats? That's actually an old one. Very Hogwarts."

She groaned and grabbed his arm. He didn't flinch. He lost focus and couldn't think of a retort as she pulled him out of the building.

When he stepped out, he turned around, looked at her intently, and said, " _Thank you_ , Granger. Until next time."

And then he Disapparated.

When he arrived back home, a dozen different instances of him finding her _fucking adorable_ flashed through his mind.

And then he figured it out.

Within – what he and his therapist called – his mind's _Room of Lost Thoughts_ , he had only unraveled and processed the memories and feelings of war, family, fear, depression, shame, guilt…

He didn't realize there were other repressed thoughts he hadn't unpacked yet. He imagined his mind shoved these ones into a metaphorical box and pushed it to the corner. He imagined it being covered by cobwebs and layers of dust.

He still had an entire occluded collection in his mind, and for whatever reason, it was all related to Hermione fucking Granger.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a comment would surely fill my heart with light. thanks for reading!


	5. Alterations

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> genuinely sorry about that delay - i underestimated how much i'd want to edit before posting. this chapter switches between both their pov's. here we go!

Back at Flourish & Blotts, Malfoy had very rudely Apparated right in front of her and Hermione jumped at the deafening _CRACK_. That absolute prick.

She didn’t want to think about what he meant by “see you soon.” She also didn’t want to think about how she actually felt a little bit guilty for lashing out at him and assuming his feelings like they were still a couple of teenagers.

Oliver was right, of course. She _did_ vouch for him at his trial, and she knew from the start that her word would hold more weight than that of her friends – yes, even more than the words from The Boy Who Lived. She remembered laughing at the irony of how _she_ , the Queen Mudblood, held the freedom of Draco Malfoy in her hands.

The days before his trial, Hermione thought of Malfoy quite a bit. When she prepared for something major, she _prepared_ for it. Hermione didn’t _wing_ anything. She sought to have as much as possible about her life meticulously planned. No big surprises – just some unexpected setbacks with solutions. It was when she let the little details fall through the cracks that she got herself into trouble.

Hermione spent days outlining every direction of questioning the Wizengamot could take. She listed out all the questions they could ask and varying forms of answers she’d respond with. What kind of attitude was she going for? Which facet of Hermione Granger did they need to see most? She wouldn’t allow herself to look young and naïve. She had to demand to be taken seriously. Despite all they had gone through… they were still teenagers. Eighteen-years-old. She may have been Harry Potter’s best friend, but they were all still children in everyone’s eyes.

This line of thought brought her to feel empathetic toward Malfoy. She wrote about and outlined all the interactions they had in her memory. She needed to put herself back in those moments and see those memories through his psyche.

She felt… pity. She felt bad for him. He was a right asshole and the objective hell he put her through could be deemed unforgiveable in someone else’s eyes, but she always felt like there was something Malfoy _wasn’t_ saying. Everything he did and said to her stopped feeling personal after third year.

At the time of his trial in the heart of summer, she had just moved into her first flat. She only had a kitchen table, couch, and bed. The rest of her life was stored in meticulously organized and labeled boxes spread throughout her flat.

She spent hours at her kitchen table and littered it with newspaper clippings on the Malfoys, their family tree, and even his school records that were embarrassingly easy to obtain. Also a little illegal – not entirely, but she had a couple trusty connections that believed in Malfoy’s freedom, including Professor McGonagall.

She just needed to understand him was all. All she wanted to do was compare his grades prior to sixth year to his grades after and confirm what she already knew – his grades had faltered when he spent all his free time in the Room of Requirement. She didn’t notice it at first then, but she remembered something had been missing in her classes. She noticed the absence of drawled answers given to professors’ questions without a raised hand. The lack of sneers and smirks in response to the impressed looks she disguised as glares. The exchange of empty insults in a quick-witted crossfire faded slowly until he was simply absent from class altogether.

She also had to fight the urge to vomit all over his transcripts prior to sixth year, which were very similar to hers.

She had found herself completely alone with Malfoy three times that year – once in the library on a Friday night, along the Great Lake at the heart of a cloudy afternoon, and running amongst the castle grounds after Dumbledore died.

There was a period of time she tried to journal. These instances were amongst the handful she managed to write that year. They felt important enough to stow away for some future purpose. Those memories fought to exist in her consciousness. She dug through a dusty box with school textbooks she couldn’t bear to part with and found her journal, not even halfway used. She flipped through the unimportant pages where she vented about Harry and Ron, and then that familiar wave of curiosity and wonder filled her.

She recalled a snippet of an entry that she had written after an argument she and Malfoy shared hours before Dumbledore died: _In fifth year, he told me that there was nothing more important to him than self-preservation. Why did he tell me to hide at the World Cup? And why did he tell me to do the same thing tonight? What about warning about my safety fit into his parameters of self-preservation?_

His insults to her in front of their friends was child’s play – and even then, Harry and Ron commented on how they could hardly keep up.

_It’s the times we find each other alone or the times we know no one else is listening – those are the rows that matter, she had written. Those are the conversations where things are shifted. When the world feels unstable, but makes a little more sense._

And another: _When did arguing with him become some form of release? Our fights are historic. People will stop everything to hear our rapid fire spats. But I’m only so confident because I know he’s not holding back. I know he isn’t underestimating me. I trust him to always be my match in this way. Just as he trusts me to spit something back in much the same way. What a strange thing to trust in one another. What a strange thing to trust him with anything at all._

And as she waited for the door to the court room to open the day of his trial, she felt that familiar confidence surge within her, filling her body from her chest. Hardly five minutes into her statement, after Kingsley asked her how she knew he was remorseful for his actions, her eyes had met his for the first time that morning for just a second.

In that second, he looked at her in the same way he always did wherever he decided to rile her up at Hogwarts and in the same way he met her eyes as convulsed in pain in his childhood home.

He trusted her. He never underestimated her. He felt confident in her ability to match him, only this time, she would redirect that to the entirety of the Wizengamot.

What a strange thing for him to trust her with anything at all.

* * *

Later that day, Ginny owled an angry letter to Hermione with a parcel that contained her bridesmaid dress.

 _Bugger. I was hoping she’d forget,_ she thought hopelessly.

Ginny very adamantly scribble-demanded her to get the dress fitted today, otherwise consider her not invited to the wedding. She used a different color quill for each sentence to get into her good graces and it worked. Such a manipulative redhead.

So Hermione entered Malkin’s Bride and Groom to fulfill Ginny’s demands for the second time that week. A very freshly-dressed employee – whose name she found out was Matteo – greeted Hermione with measuring tape draped around his neck and led her to the fitting rooms, where she threw on her peach bridesmaid dress. The man carefully began making the appropriate alterations.

She soon figured out that Matteo was one of those “spiritual” people. He had heard about the events earlier today and her unlikely partnership with Malfoy.

“I’ve been tailoring that boy’s robes since he was a toddler with that angelic little face,” Matteo said nostalgically, his magical measuring tape swooping around Hermione’s body.

“Well, in that case, I feel very sorry for you and your sanity,” she responded, half kidding.

“Oh, hush, Ms. Granger. He’s a very nice boy. I saw that man’s aura ebb and flow through the years. I’ve got quite a feeling the universe has something coming into fruition for him. The energy surrounding him is palpable.”

Hermione had sudden flashes of Trelawny and she tensed. Words like _energy_ and _aura_ immediately plummeted her into a well of scorn and judgment.

Less than half an hour later, Matteo’s measuring tape uncurled itself from her limbs and the dress magically confined itself perfectly around her body.

 _Okay, Ginny. Not bad,_ she thought. Then she tried to pull up the neckline. _Except for this damn neckline._

“Oh, leave it be, Ms. Granger,” Matteo said laughing. “You look stunning, dear. You’ll surely turn some heads tomorrow. Maybe even Mr. Malfoy will take notice.” He winked.

She turned his head to look at him suspiciously. “What do you mean? He wasn’t invited to the wedding.”

“Nobody told you?” he asked. “He owns and manages a chain of restaurants, and one of them is where the reception is.”

Why did nobody tell her? Why did she have to figure out all this valuable information about him from the _tailor_?

“It’s in Muggle London!” she said, as if this meant something after all this time.

He shrugged. “Guess he wanted to try something new.”

She groaned. “Why has this been happening? How have I not crossed paths with him in four years and all of a sudden, I’ll be seeing him three days in a week?”

Hermione lived in some softcore form of hell. However much she secretly enjoyed testing her wit and mental strength with their arguments, she would still rather live without the headache of figuring out which box he fit in within her mind – _good person or bad person_? To her, it was all or nothing – there was no in-between when it came to him. She had tucked away all her merciful thoughts about him to the pit of her mind, along with the bad memories that came with him. His presence was attached to so many instances that gutted her. Prejudice. Feeling hunted. Less than. Whether he deserved it or not, the forgiving and defining memories with him got tucked away as well.

But ever since she had run into him again in this very store not a couple days ago, she felt things start to trickle out of that box. It was always there. Easily accessible when needed. She had a sense of self-preservation too after all.

“Synchronicities,” Matteo said vaguely, quickly adjusting something at her sleeve. At Hermione's confused gaze, he continued. “Are coincidences really coincidences or are they perhaps connected to something greater?”

She looked at him disbelievingly, hoping the judgment didn’t seep through her eyes. 

“Meaningful coincidences,” he reiterated simply. “Have you ever had the same thought as somebody without ever talking about it before and call it a ‘connection?’ Or saying that ‘it must be meant to be?’ Maybe that’s what’s happening for you this week.”

It took all her self-control to stomach the snappy retorts she had saved for people who believed in this hubbub, like Parvati, Lavender (rest her soul), and Professor sodding Trelawney.

“You’re saying I’ve been running into Malfoy lately because some universal force is performing some divine intervention?” she asked, hoping she didn’t sound as critical as she felt.

“I’m saying that sometimes coincidences aren’t just coincidences. Maybe some coincidences mean something more… but don’t take my word for it. I’m just the tailor.”

Hermione smiled in an effort to overcompensate in case she came off as rude. Frankly, she thought this _synchronicity_ was a silly belief that forced meaning onto trivial events.

 _Meaningful coincidence?_ Hermione Granger and Draco Malfoy?

Please.

* * *

The day of the wedding, Hermione slipped on the sunset – or peach? – bridesmaid dress. After putting on a pair of gold drop earrings and beige strappy heels, she stood in front of her mirror. Why was this neckline so _low_?

 _Damn it, Ginny,_ she thought. _I see what you’re doing._

As satisfied as she could be, she looked herself in the eye, took a deep breath, and prepared her mental health to be in the presence of dozens of people she didn’t feel comfortable around. She Apparated to the ceremony an hour early to set up the wards and the decorations.

Ninety-six people attended the wedding, including family, old Order members, friends from school, and people from work.

Before the ceremony began, Hermione gave a pep-talk to the bride.

“Okay, Ginny, I need you to take a long, deep breath with me–” They took a breath together. “–and tell me it’s going to be okay.”

“It’s going to be okay,” Ginny breathed.

“I love Harry.”

“I love Harry,” she repeated.

“And I’m changing the height of Hermione’s neckline–”

“And I’m – _hey_!” Ginny swatted her shoulder as they both laughed.

“I’m only joking, Ginny – it doesn’t look so bad.”

“You’re just lucky I’m a considerate bride who actually chose a _prime_ dress for the Maid of Honor,” Ginny said, looking up and down at her dress. “I mean, look at you, Hermione! Matteo did a great job with that leg slit. You will absolutely catch someone’s attention!”

“I am not using your wedding as a way to _find somebody_ , Ginny. You’re mad. Also, everyone here is either your family, married, engaged, or old.”

Ginny shrugged. “You never know. There’s a handful of single men. Harry invited basically the entire Auror Department.”

Hermione felt something catch in her throat and she hoped Ginny didn’t notice how nervous she suddenly became.

When the music started and the time came, Hermione hugged Ginny and exited the room to find Ron waiting at the start of the aisle for her to arrive. Ron wore simple and new black dress robes with the forest green tie that caused her so much stress and disdain. He looked very handsome, grown up, and fit. Years ago, the sight of him looking like this would have made her swoon, but now she looked at him and marveled at how much he’d grown.

When he noticed her, he smiled and put out his elbow for her to take. She happily looped her arm through his and they waited until their cue to walk.

“You look stunning, Hermione,” he said to her.

“Thanks,” she said reluctantly. She pointlessly tried to pull up her dress so it didn’t show so much cleavage. “Your damned devil sister chose this dress with too low of a neckline…”

He noticed and chuckled. “It’s never too low, Hermione.” He winked, which earned him a blow to his shoulder.

“ _Ron!_ ” she whispered menacingly.

“Relax! If anybody tries to make a move on you, I will give them a very detailed report on why they should not date you. Would not recommend it.”

Hermione laughed without even trying to come up with a snappy retort.

When they received their cue and began walking, she thought about how walking down the aisle with Ron would have sent her to tears years ago and how the very thought of being married to him made her feel off. But today, they walked down the aisle as the Best Man and Maid of Honor for Harry Potter and Ginny Weasley.

The wedding commenced and Ginny walked down the aisle with Mr. and Mrs. Weasley at her side. While everybody gasped and marveled at the bride, both Ron and Hermione turned their heads to look at Harry standing between them.

It hit her when she watched the way his eyes welled up at the sight of his almost-wife – she wanted to have somebody look at her like that. Completely in love. Unconditionally. Knowing her past, comforting her when it got impossibly dark. She thought of how she _did_ have the fear of dying alone, of not allowing anybody to love her so completely.

She and Ron made eye contact and she somehow felt understood. She wished that they both could be in love with one another instead of going through the journey of finding somebody to start with from scratch. He nodded in her direction with a smile, and when both of them looked toward Harry and Ginny, Hermione felt a deep sense of peace.

And too quickly, the bride and groom kissed and the ceremony came to an end with whoops and cheers. As much as she talked about weddings being pointless… she still ended up crying happily – something Harry, Ron, and Ginny all teased her about later.

As everybody lingered to congratulate the newly wedded Mr. and Mrs. Potter, Ron and Hermione Apparated to the reception venue to prepare for the rest of the night.

Hermione, additionally, mentally prepared her wit… just in case she needed to use it. For nobody in particular.

* * *

Draco woke up that morning feeling nervous and excited. He met with Astoria at the Ministry to officially sign off on their divorce.

“Well don’t you look spiffy, Draco,” Astoria said, eyeing his navy blue dress robes. “We match!”

She wore a navy blue dress with black tights and what looked like an expensive black fur-lined coat. She wore her hair parted to one side, adorned with a diamond hair clip that was probably a Greengrass family heirloom.

“You look wonderful yourself, Astoria,” he said to her with a real smile. “Beautifully divorceable. I’m sure those family diamonds will be snatched from your hair immediately once news gets out.”

She smiled brightly. “Taking advantage while I still have them.”

They really were in love with each other at some point. She knew him more than anybody in the world. She knew exactly how to handle his shit and his silly, little episodes. Their families had grown up together and she shared a steady stream of humorous conversation with the woman throughout his life. And when they were both pressured to be married to give off the image of a friendly, pureblooded union, they confirmed that there was no one else they’d rather do it with.

As he reached to sign the papers that would officially declare them divorced, he felt a slight pang in his chest. It was a strange breakup, such a unique relationship. They married as friends, actually learned to love each other, and then learned they had to have the ability to feel something stronger for somebody they weren’t forced to love. There was always something missing when they were intimate. They were almost at their happiest with each other, but it didn’t quite reach its peak.

But she was his partner. His best friend – though he could never break that to Blaise, Theo, and Pansy.

It was a strange breakup, but it wouldn’t change anything. The thought of not keeping her in his life as an important person made him feel hollow. She fit into his life just like anyone else, and he would fucking maul any man who treated her with a shred of disrespect.

It would’ve been really fucking convenient if they worked out, rather than starting from scratch, but sue him. He knew there was a feeling stronger than what she felt for her. He knew he deserved to be happy and she played a large part in helping him believe that about himself as well.

Now, they signed the papers that officially declared them divorced. A deep sense of peace filled him like water pouring into a glass. She beamed at him and squeezed his hand. He found himself smiling back.

They faced the door that would lead them out of the office and took a collective deep breath.

“Are you ready?” Draco asked, putting his arm out for her to take.

“Let’s be a disappointment, honey,” she said with a mischievous smile as she put sunglasses on. Draco looked at her, confused. Why did she need to wear those indoors? “You know how much the flash hurts my poor eyes. I’d like to be able to see the food I eat at our Four-Course Divorce. Now come on. I’m hungry.”

Astoria looped her arm through her ex-husband’s and they walked out of the Wizengamot Administrative Offices. They were immediately met with flashing lights and a horde of reporters asking them stupid questions. Draco took deep breaths as Astoria squeezed his arm close to calm his boiling blood.

_“How did your families react to the news?”_

_“Mr. Malfoy, did you cheat on Ms. Greengrass?”_

_“Ms. Greengrass, how was Mr. Malfoy in bed?”_

_“Mr. Malfoy, what did you do that led to the downfall of your relationship?”_

_“Ms. Greengrass, how did Mr. Malfoy handle your expenses?”_

Draco and Astoria purposely avoided the reporters’ questions. Draco muttered angrily under his breath at the accusatory questions directed at him. Always the bad guy, responsible for the downfall.

“I always forget how long the walk is to the fireplaces,” Astoria said grumpily as they dodged and ignored more and more reporters that continued to follow them.

The floo networks were in sight. They hurriedly stepped foot into a fireplace as Draco grabbed a handful of floo powder. Right before he threw it to the ground, they heard one more question:

_“Mr. Malfoy, is there anything going on between you and Hermione Granger?”_

And then the world around them spun as they traveled through the network and planted their feet at Magic Fries and Pies. The fireplace was located in a foyer just outside the main area of the restaurant, where they could already hear clanking glasses and friends laughing boisterously.

Astoria grabbed Draco’s arm urgently and turned him to face her before he could step out of the fireplace and flee.

“What did that last reporter mean, Draco Malfoy?!” she asked him, bringing her hands to her hips in an effort to look like a condescending mother. She failed every time.

He groaned. Did they have to do this now? “Probably some gossip they’re trying to make out of nothing.”

“That did not come from nothing! That was the only question of its kind. Did something happen?”

“I thought you were hungry?”

She took off her sunglasses so he could see her glowering.

“You tell me what happened right now!”

“Okay, but first, get your finger out of my face.”

Draco explained to her a very condensed version about how he essentially saved Granger’s bookstore, to which she responded, “I doubt _Granger_ needed _you_ to solve something, but whatever strokes your ego.”

“Do I get no credit for solving a riddle before the supposed brightest witch of our age?”

“I can’t believe you saw her when you were getting this dumb tie–”

“It’s my new tie for my new life! It’s very symbolic!”

“And you purchased it when you met her again for the first time? Yes, how very _symbolic._ ”

He did not like the way she obnoxiously wiggled her eyebrows.

“Keep me posted, Draco honey,” Astoria said, patting his cheek, trying to channel her inner ‘condescending mother.’ “You must be very excited for the Potter wedding later today, aren’t you?”

His jaw clenched. “Not exactly because I will be working, _dear_.”

He tried not to think about the fact that he would be seeing her today. It was too distracting of a thought. Did he have enough stamina to keep up with her endless wit?

“Work can still be fun.” She winked and then looped her arm with his once more, pulling toward the main area. “Come now. I’m famished.”

Theo’s head popped in from around the corner.

“I knew I heard something in here,” he said with a goofy smile on his face. He opened his arms and nuzzled his armpits against their heads. Draco and Astoria groaned as they pushed him off them. “Come on and follow me, my young pureblood disgraces!”

* * *

When Hermione arrived at the venue, Mrs. Weasley was already walking up to her briskly carrying a remarkable amount of items in her hands. Somehow, she also levitated what looked like several centerpieces behind her. Forget Harry Potter, the Boy Who Lived – Molly Weasley won the award for most magically talented woman in the world.

“Oh, Hermione dear, could you please help me with these centerpieces? I may have overcommitted a tad and my focus is beginning to slip,” she said hurriedly. Hermione saw the pile of materials levitating behind her slowly moving toward the ground and cast a levitation spell herself. Mrs. Weasley let out a sigh of relief.

“Mrs. Weasley, there is such a thing as taking two trips, you know,” Hermione said with an amused smile as she walked alongside her into the reception hall.

“No honest mother has the time for two trips,” she said, teetering carefully to a table to set down her items. “ _Accio place cards!_ ” The summoned stack of cards flew into her hand and she held them to Hermione. “Oh, Hermione, could you be a dear and take these to Ron at the front and have him set up the entrance table? Oh, but before that, could you also place all those centerpieces? Oh, yes, then could you start setting up the wards?”

Hermione did as she was told with a wave of her wand and made her way to the front of the venue. She found Ron by the doors with his back facing her. She broke into a slight jog as she approached him and hugged him from behind.

“Bloody hell, Hermione, you’re going to throw out my back,” he said surprised, facing her to give her a proper hug.

There were a couple years of her life where she and Ron were in love with one another. For a year post-war, they dated, they clicked, they understood each other more than anyone else. After several months, they found themselves growing apart from one another. Where their goals used to intersect, they began to differ. Ron gave her his all and Hermione was still distant. Hermione worked too much and there remained a part of her she kept guarded. She couldn’t find it in herself to completely give herself to him emotionally.

So they began to argue. They otherwise worked perfectly together, but it was difficult to continue on with the relationship when one party wasn’t completely vulnerable and honest with themselves. They ended mutually. The papers had a field day in headlines all about how Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger, fated lovers since Hogwarts, were no more.

Eventually, it got easier. After two years, it became normal. And now, three years after they stopped dating, they came to the point where she could act the way she did now and hug him from behind and feel completely platonic. He could make her laugh until she unattractively snorted and they could have lunch or coffee without feeling like something was missing. She could ask him about who he has been seeing lately and give him dating advice. They could reference their romantic relationship easily as a thing of the past – Hermione even used it to highlight what he did right and wrong. They often laughed about all the little annoyances and arguments they used to have and not feel any longing to be with one another in that way again.

Hermione valued Ron’s friendship dearly. It took years to get to where they were now, but seeing firsthand how much a man could grow gave her hope for all men. If she could find somebody who understood her and loved her romantically as much as Ron loved her platonically –

She couldn’t even imagine it. She couldn’t imagine deserving that kind of love.

“I have _loads_ to tell you about my week and I need you to set the record straight for me and make me feel sane because everybody seems utterly confused about what constitutes flirting,” Hermione said.

Ron looked very interested now. “ _You?_ Flirting? You mean with a person? Don’t believe it.”

Hermione mocked offense. “Oh, so you don’t think it’s possible for me anymore?”

“I didn’t say I don’t think it’s _possible_ – anyway, with who?”

Hermione started to talk, but was interrupted by the devil himself.

“Granger.”

_Malfoy._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> here we are with the buildup - all set up to start an emotional storm. i anticipate the next chapter not having to be edited as much as this one... will try to get chapter 6 out to you soon as soon as i make those edits/revisions! some kudos and comments would be loved and revered. thanks for sticking around!


	6. Nice Dresses & Nice Things

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ***TRIGGER WARNING: Rape***

Draco saw her from afar when she was helping that wacky Weasley mother carry all those centerpieces. Admittedly, he was impressed at her ability to multitask, but by god, woman, take two trips!

A lump formed in his throat looking at Granger. He saw her smile and laugh in a way that was never directed toward him and only reserved for people she loved. The leg slit and the low neckline of her dress were plenty for his imagination to work with, but he shoved it away. They still may as well have been in different dimensions. Right?

But the war was won. He and Astoria officially divorced, making him an Official Pureblood Disappointment and perpetual bachelor. She was no longer with Weasley.

He shook his head. He couldn’t entertain this thought.

One of his employees walked up to him, breaking him out of his inappropriate thoughts and held out an oil-stained piece of parchment.

“Bria and Packard both had some emergencies and had to call out last minute,” he said. “I didn’t know who was putting up the wards, but I figured they’d like to know the names of the people covering their shifts to let them through. They’re not going to be here for another hour.”

Draco took the parchment from him. “Appreciate it, Lovensky.”

“Not a prob, boss,” he said as he walked away.

Why did he feel like he was preparing to walk into a war? His heart began to race as he walked over to Granger, trying to get rid of the nervous pressure in his chest.

“—Anyway, with who?” He only caught on to the last bit Weasley when he stood before her.

“Granger.” _Eyes up, Draco,_ he embarrassingly had to tell himself. Even with her heels, he still stood almost a head taller than her. 

“What’s this?” she asked, eyeing him suspiciously as she swiped it from his hand.

“For Merlin’s sake, Granger, your third first impression is just as rude as the first and second.”

“Oh, _honestly_ , if we’re going to talk about ghastly first impressions, we’ll have to take into account how you were unashamed to order butter pecan ice cream in front of somebody you haven’t seen in four years—”

“Coming from someone who ordered a _sherbet_ —"

“And you showing up without anyone _asking_ —”

“You broke my hand, Granger. That takes the lead for an all-time worst second first impression,” he said with finality.

“Not the time for this, Malfoy—”

“Are you giving up then?” He looked too pleased with himself.

She shook her head. “What is this parchment?”

“Last minute names of people to let through the wards you’re apparently _so good_ at putting up. A couple of my employees had to call out so these are the ones covering them.”

“From the same person who was _so good_ at mending your broken hand. I should’ve let it stay mangled if I knew you’d be so ungrateful.”

“I’m absolutely _hurt_ that you don’t remember my valiant act of saying thank you at the end of our last encounter.” He smirked when he saw her lips purse angrily.

“‘Thank yous’ become null when ungrateful behavior follows,” she said, as if reading out of an imaginary rule book.

“Bloody hell, Granger, I didn’t know there were so many rules for gratitude. I’ll need to take some notes.”

“Erm, Hermione,” Weasley said as he cleared his throat. Both of them looked at him as if they just remembered he was there. This tended to happen. When they argued, there was no regard to the outside world. All he focused on in that moment was her.

“You were given a job?” Weasley pointedly looked at the parchment Draco brought her.

“ _Right_ ,” she breathed.

“And I’ll need to get back to my staff as well,” he said. “Don’t muck it up, _Queen of the Wards._ ”

She glared at him.

Before he left, he looked at her and her dress, a compliment at the tip of his tongue.

*

_In fourth year, for an extremely short amount of time, periwinkle didn’t seem like a bad color. The reason for this absurd liking may have had something to do with the woman who wore a dress in this very shade._

_He never really understood the definition of the word “beautiful” — or even used the sissy word in his life — but the night of the Yule Ball, he knew Hermione Granger fit in the realm of that description._

_How was he supposed to despise someone like her? A girl known as the “brightest witch of their age?” No matter how much he bullied her, spat at her, treated her like rubbish — she knew when she was right, when to stop, and when to fight back._

_Toward the end of the night, Draco had stepped out of the Great Hall for a while to take a break from Pansy Parkinson’s mindless chatter. He leaned against a pole, checking back to make sure he couldn’t be seen from the doors. He didn’t want his date to find him. Draco relaxingly took a sip of his butterbeer, enjoying the peace in which his mind could actually process thoughts. Minutes after he did so, a pair of arguing voices stormed out through the doors._

_“Well, you know the solution then, don’t you?” She sounded hysterical and infuriated, and he couldn’t help but recognize the voice that called him a “foul, loathsome, evil little cockroach” last year._

_“What?” His utterance was cowardly and pathetic._

_A lover’s spat, it seemed. Between Weasley and Granger, a Triwizard Champion’s date._

_“Pack up the courage and ask me before someone else does!” she yelled. Draco could swear he heard her give a blow at his shoulder. Weasley seemed mortified at her “solution” and failed to answer until she spoke again. “And not as a last resort!”_

_“That’s just completely off the point!”_

__Weasley, you troll, _Draco thought as he eavesdropped on their conversation from behind a pillar._

_Apparently, he had stalked off because he could hear Granger’s sobs without the Weasel interjecting to make them worse. He seized this moment to torment the heartbroken girl. She was at the Yule Ball as Viktor Krum’s date, and all she wanted was to be with Weasley._

_Draco gave up in controlling his complimentary thoughts toward this woman for the night._

_“That was quite a show, Granger,” Draco said, walking up to the poor girl. She looked up at him with a start, and he unconsciously wondered how she could still look decent in a state like this._

_Granger hastily wiped her tears away and stood._

_“Of course, kick me when I’m down, you bastard,” she said with a voice that could kill if she wanted it to. Draco found it unwise to point out the fact that it was the first time he had heard her curse. “Just come waltz to a heartbroken mudblood’s pathetic state and bother her even more? What is wrong with you men? You lot just drive us away because you’re too bloody scared to reveal a single slice of feeling. You leave us with the notion that we did something wrong, when no! It’s actually all your fault — you’re all just too immature to accept that!”_

_She didn’t seem aware of the fact that she had just ranted about her precious, little problem to him and that he could use this to taunt her for the rest of her life._

_“To be fair, Granger, Weasley is a literal weasel in a centuries-old dress rags, your date is an international Quidditch star, and you look like a glorified slab of mud tonight. If you were less of a piece of scum, I would actually feel sort of sorry for the Weasel. But alas, it appears you both deserve each other, blood traitor and mudblood.”_

_Draco wanted to flinch at his own word choice, but he was still his father’s son and he had a silly reputation to uphold. Granger looked at him strangely._

_“Glorified slab of mud?” she repeated like it was a question. “That’s probably as close to a compliment as I’ll ever get from you.”_

_Shit. He felt exposed._

_“If being called a slab of mud makes you happy, mudblood could not be more appropriate.”_

_“So we’re making me happy now, are we?” she said with a victorious smile._

_Draco sneered. He had to recover from this._

_“It probably would have been better for Wizarding humanity as a whole if you died in that lake during the Second Task, Granger. Or better yet — if you had looked that basilisk in the eye hunting mudbloods.”_

_Granger’s face went white remembering the trauma of that entire year -- that was the first time she felt she was being hunted, where she learned the word mudblood from the pathetic excuse for a man standing before her. It was the first time she truly felt her existence was inferior._

_“You’re not worth any of this, Granger,” Draco said, gesturing toward the ornate hall — or was it the entire castle, or perhaps the Wizarding World as a whole? “You’re dirt and you’ll be put into the ground at the end of it all.”_

_“So will you, Malfoy,” Granger spat back. “We will all end up being put in the ground. With the dirt, worms, and maggots underneath. Blood means nothing.”_

_“It means everything, Granger. Don’t kid yourself.”_

_The truth was — at just fourteen-years-old, Draco never thought about it that way. They all would end up in the same place, regardless of how they lived their lives or what blood they bore._

_“And Malfoy, just a piece of advice… if you want to tell somebody they look nice, just say it,” she said bluntly._

_He felt like he could hex her at that moment. He never tried to do such a thing! When did calling somebody a glorified piece of mud equate to a compliment? She was delusional._

_“Something you and Ron have in common — you’re both too cowardly to say how you feel.”_

_“If you ever compare me to Weasley—”_

_“You’ll what, Malfoy? We all know you’re not as tough as you think you are.”_

_“When you die at the hands of a pureblood, Granger, I hope it’s me,” Draco said darkly._

_And then he walked away, feeling just as dirty as the insults he threw her way. They seemed to affect him more than they affected her._

*

Without thinking, Draco said, “Nice dress, Granger.”

Fuck. What the hell was he doing? She blushed and he suddenly felt an overwhelming desire to—

_Not now._

“Much better color than that god-awful tie you almost let the groom wear.”

He didn’t bother to wait if she said “thank you” before he turned on his heel and walked off. 

* * *

Hermione was an introvert. She experienced difficulty in large crowds and felt anxious in unfamiliar social situations. Work was familiar. For the most part, she knew what to expect, and it wasn’t so much dealing with a _crowd_ as much as it was helping individual customers and talking to people one at a time. When unexpected things happened at work, it was a problem to be solved. Like arithmetic. Or a puzzle.

In crowds like this where the expectation was to be social and converse with old friends and family members (most of whom she hadn’t seen since she and Ron dated), she felt nervous. She didn’t know if she would be asked about the war or if people expected her to talk about it. She didn’t know when somebody would say something that triggered her. So as she set up the wards before the dinner started, she planned a potential escape route, a place she could panic if something did happen. 

George hosted the reception — he announced the arrival of the newlyweds and introduced Ron and Hermione. George without the presence of Fred still shocked people, especially during times like these where a bit of their wit and practical jokes would complete the picture.

Eventually, Ron and Hermione tag-teamed to honor the bride and groom and say a toast. They bantered slightly, and they gave speeches that simultaneously made the crowd hold their stomachs in laughter and wipe tears from their eyes. Mrs. Weasley could be seen at her table blowing into her handkerchief with a smile and eyes red and glassy.

During the dinner, she sat at a table with Ron and the rest of the Weasley siblings with their respective significant others. The lobster carbonara was divine. Hermione wanted it in bulk so she could freeze it and eat it for every meal for the next three weeks.

She periodically looked around. She didn’t know why — probably a self-preservation thing. Being aware of her environment made her feel safe. She spotted _him_ from the Auror Department and her breath caught in her throat. She sipped at her water as she consciously looked anywhere but him. She focused on how cool the water felt against her lips. As she continued to look around, she noticed Malfoy cleaning up a spill from across the room.

Hm. A humbling sight. She never imagined him to be somebody to clean up anything himself. She expected he had elves clean up after him his entire life.

She watched as an employee said something to him and saw Malfoy clap his back casually in gratitude. She saw him smile. It wasn’t like any of the smiles throughout all their Hogwarts years. Any joy from his past always had a hint of mischievousness. Or it was forced. Awkward. Malfoy was never _friendly_.

But she saw him smile today and it didn’t look out of place. And the fact that it _didn’t_ look out of place had her transfixed on it more.

*

_In the middle of their fifth year, Hermione sat beside Malfoy in a Transfiguration class. They were in the height of Dumbledore’s Army and he donned an ugly purple badge on his robes, signifying him as a member of Umbridge’s Inquisitorial Squad._

_He had become especially nasty toward her this year. She sat up straight and kept her guard up, readying herself to suffer through an entire class period with him next to her._

_They were instructed to spend the class period transfiguring goldfinches into golden snitches. After McGonagall’s lecture and instructions, a goldfinch appeared in front of each student to transfigure accordingly. Tweets and light flapping of wings could be heard throughout the classroom. Throughout the class period, many students had to catch birds that attempted to fly away from failed spell casting._

_Hermione put all her focus in completing this assignment, while also trying to pay no attention to the boy next to her. Over halfway through the class, she felt that she was just about to get it. She had transfigured the main body of the bird into a golden ball, but it still flapped with the wings of the goldfinch._

_She heard a victorious sound next to her. She turned and saw Malfoy smiling at his work. A perfectly functioning golden snitch buzzed around his head._

_She looked at him in this moment and thought of how very unnatural Malfoy looked when he smiled. It didn’t belong on his face. How depressing must his life be that a simple smile looked misplaced? Any expression in the general realm of joy on Malfoy’s face looked like it didn’t belong there. Like he wasn’t meant to be happy._

_Hermione had concluded last year that Draco Malfoy was not happy. People as awful as him, who bullied others mercilessly, had to be some of the unhappiest people in the world. It was sad, really, when she got lost in the thought._

_“Jealous that I figured it out before you, mudblood?” he said to her. His smile quickly turned into that mischievous grin._

_She pursed her lips. She was a bit jealous…_

_Malfoy had the snitch whizz around Hermione’s head annoyingly. She groaned in frustration and grasped the snitch in the air between them before it could torment her more._

_They both looked at her closed fist in shock. Hermione was rather impressed by her own reflexes. She figured that was why he was shocked as well._

_She threw the snitch back at him and he caught it with ease._

_“I’m not jealous of anything of yours, Malfoy,” she said, turning back to her half goldfinch, half snitch._

_“Poor Granger. You don’t even know what it’s like to have nice things.”_

_“I have many nice things, but maybe our ideas of nice things are different.”_

_He scoffed. “What, like dirty blood? Maggots? Hand-me-downs?”_

_She shrugged. “Real friendship, for one. Not like those idiots you surround yourself with.”_

_“I have real friends, mudblood. Don’t you dare assume things about me.”_

_She ignored him. “Nice teeth. All thanks to you, really.”_

_He sneered._

_“My parents,” she said._

_She noticed him stiffen._

_“Happiness. Happiness is definitely nice.” She took her eyes off her goldfinch-snitch and observed his reaction._

_His expression looked far away._

_And then he said, “Self-preservation.”_

_Hermione looked confused. “What?”_

_“Self-preservation is nice.” He said it like a curse._

_“In matters of life and death, maybe, but can’t there also be too much self-preservation? Can't it just turn into selfishness and fear?”_

_“Self-preservation is everything, Granger,” he said, looking at her seriously. “_ Everything _I do is to protect myself. Slytherins aren’t fucking heroes. We’re smarter than that. We stay alive.”_

_“Your idea of staying alive is doing what you’re told and being suspicious of everyone?”_

_“My idea of staying alive is fitting into the role of the good pureblood son of a long pureblood line,” he said with a forced smirk._

_“What does that look like?”_

_“Wouldn’t you like to know,” he muttered. And then he looked straight into her eyes. “Filthy little mudblood.”_

_And then she understood. Fitting into this role was insulting her. Treating her like scum._

_She stared back at him with equal grit and sting. “Excuses, Malfoy.”_

_“What do you mean ‘excuses?’”_

_“If you think treating me like dirt is a way to preserve yourself, maybe you’re much bigger of a coward than I thought.”_

_“Have you thought about the fact that maybe the rest of the world doesn’t give a shit about looking_ ‘bold,’ _and_ ‘courageous,’ _or are you too close-minded to think others can’t have different values apart from foolish bravery and stupidity?” he said, looking her in the eye so intensely, she had to consciously tell herself not to falter. “Don’t act like we weren’t born on opposing sides, Granger. Choices and cowardice look very different where I grew up.”_

_“How so?”_

_“It’ll do your frizzy little head best if you fucked off how I choose to live out my values.”_

_Hermione could not stop thinking about his words for the rest of the day. Who knew Malfoy had more depth to him?_

*

Today, he looked like someone who knew that he deserved to be happy.

"All right, Hermione,” Ron said suddenly, wiping his mouth with his napkin. He threw it on his empty plate. Hermione had barely eaten half of hers. Some things never changed.

“Am I in trouble?” she asked mid-bite.

Ron grabbed Harry, who happened to be walking by them at that moment. “Mate, I’m gonna need you in here too. It’s an emergency.”

“On my wedding day? What’s this about?” Harry asked, slightly alarmed.

“Hermione here… she’s been _flirting_ ,” Ron said in an exaggerated whisper.

Hermione hardly swallowed her bite when she choked on it and coughed. She frantically drank her water to wash it down.

“Ron, I thought you would be on my side on this one!”

“With _who_?” Harry asked.

As he sipped his wine, Ron pointedly looked at Malfoy, who was talking to one of his employees at the other side of the room. Harry followed his gaze and whipped his head back to face his friends.

“You must be barking mad, Ron. Hermione—"

“It’s not true!” she argued feebly, her cheeks flushing. If they would just let her _explain_!

“I watched you two — right in front of me, mind you — argue back and forth as an observer. Remember in school, you had to coach me on research methods? Here I am, Hermione, using what you taught me—”

“Clearly you weren’t a completely unbiased—”

“What, you think I would favor him over you? No, no, Hermione, I observed that conversation with my initial bias toward you, and I just — I couldn’t — it would be unethical to muck up the clear evidence that—”

“Tell me more, Ron. Clearly she must be in denial if something _she_ taught you is suddenly faulty,” Harry said, holding his hand in front of Hermione’s face, who actively tried to say her side of the story. “Shush, let him have a turn and then you can go. Just like… court.”

“You’re comparing this to the _justice system_?” she managed to say incredulously.

“Yes, now I’m the one who just got married, and I say Ron speaks first. Take the floor, Mr. Weasley,” Harry said, gesturing for him to continue.

Hermione crossed her arms childishly.

“Thank you, Mr. Potter,” Ron said officially, adjusting his tie. She rolled her eyes. “From what I gathered, they have met at least twice before today. Seems like he broke his hand during one of those meetings. Speaking of, should we be concerned about that, Hermione? You know he can press charges… Anyway — right when he appeared, something changed. It felt like… was it tension? And blimey, Harry, they were going back and forth so quickly, I couldn’t keep up. At the end of it, he complimented her dress, mate. Said it was _nice_.”

“Ms. Granger, it’s not looking good for you, I’ll tell you that,” Harry said, still playing along with the court theme. “You may take the floor.”

“ _Thank_ —”

“Wait! An oath. Do you promise to tell the truth and nothing but—”

“For heaven’s sake, Harry!” she seethed. “ _He_ didn’t have to say an oath!”

“That’s because Ron would never lie to me,” Harry said obviously.

“This system is rigged just like the real one,” she muttered defeatedly.

“Exactly, Ms. Granger,” Harry said. “I’ll let you pass this time without an oath. Please continue.”

“ _Honestly_ , Harry. First of all, yes, we did meet twice before today. I bumped into him when I went and bought your ties and then again when he helped me fight a couple natural disasters…”

Harry and Ron intently listened to her as she finished her story, occasionally saying small, pointless comments that Hermione talked over. 

“We need to take a sidebar, Hermione. Nothing personal — just how the system works,” Harry said, dramatically turning toward Ron and talking as if she couldn’t hear them. “Mate, she’s in denial.”

“I agree,” Ron said.

“Okay, glad we got that out of the way.” Harry looked up at very frustrated Hermione. “Sidebar over. I’ve concluded that you’re in denial.”

“I am _not_ in denial! I could never—”

“Harry, love, we need to say hello my Great-Aunt Tessie,” Ginny said, looking slightly pink from running around. She gestured toward Ron. “You also need to say hello. Don’t be rude.”

“ _Me_ not be rude? She was the one who sent me a Howler while I was at work about how I forgot her teeth in Romania—”

“That was pretty bad, Ron,” Harry said, patting him on the back consolingly. “I would be devastated if somebody forgot my teeth.”

Ron groaned and reluctantly stood up. Harry and Ginny already started walking away as Ron looked back at Hermione. Her stomach flipped anxiously. The three people she felt most comfortable around were all leaving. Ron knew how these instances made her feel and put his hand on hers on the table.

“You’ll be okay,” he said as he looked her in the eye. “Deep breaths. I’ll need them too… I’m about to talk to an aunt whose teeth I forgot to pack.”

Hermione laughed shakily and took a deep breath as he gave her hand a comforting squeeze. Then, he left and followed Harry and Ginny.

After taking a couple deep breaths, she rose from her table and found a few friends to catch up with, including Luna Lovegood, Neville Longbottom, and Hannah Abbott.

When she was thoroughly talked out, she went back to her own table and was pleased to find a piece of cheesecake waiting for her. She took a bite and felt about ready to pass out from how delicious it was.

Then, she saw him. The man from the Auror Department she did not want to see. She noticed him eye her and smirk and she averted her eyes straight away. She felt her nervousness triple into straight anxiety as she tried to distract herself.

At the second to last bite of her cheesecake, Ron came back and sat down next to her, looking very tired. Before saying anything to her, he ate a bite of his own dessert for fuel.

“She’s _never_ gonna get over the teeth, is she?”

“Honestly, Ron, I wouldn’t,” Hermione said with a smile.

“What’d I miss?” he asked with his mouth full of cheesecake. “This is bloody delicious.”

“I had a nice chat with some old friends. Teddy’s getting old, isn’t he?” Hermione reflected as she watched Andromeda feed her grandson some dessert. After a bite, the boy promptly grabbed the entire cheesecake with his hand and shoved it in his face, licking around his mouth messily.

“You okay?” Ron asked. He finished his cheesecake before Hermione took her own last bite.

“Yeah,” she answered unconvincingly. “Just… a lot of people. But I’m okay.” She felt anxiety circle in her stomach and she swallowed any emotion that could give the true extent of her discomfort away.

Eventually, the music started and people started gravitating toward the dance floor. Ron held his hand out to her as an invitation to dance and she stared at him incredulously.

“Don’t even think about it.”

“Oh, come on, Hermione. You danced with Vicky all of the Yule Ball and you can’t even give your best friend turned ex-lover turned best friend _one_ dance?”

Hermione laughed. “How are we even still friends, Ron?”

She let him take her hand and drag her toward the floor. “I have no idea. But when I feel upset, I do still think about the fact that you chose _me_ over an international Quidditch player. That’s the biggest ego boost in the world.”

They found all their friends and as Hermione looked around her — Harry quickly twirling Ginny over and over until she got dizzy, Ron learning a strange series of dance moves from Luna, Neville bopping and swaying with his arm around Hannah, Mrs. Weasley dancing with Teddy in her arms, and a sea of redheads forming a dance line — she felt safe. There was nothing to be afraid of. Especially after a couple drinks. 

* * *

Face flushed and feeling a bit warm from the dancing, Hermione excused herself from the floor. She was on her way to the bar to get a glass of wine when she felt fingers wrap around her scarred forearm painfully, jolting her body backwards, her front colliding with Cormac McLaggen. She froze, a strange mixture of fear, anger, and disgust filling her veins.

All the chatter, music, laughing, and bustling throughout the room faded into a dull static that filled her head. She could only hear his voice as if they were the only people in the room. She suddenly felt like she was in a different place altogether and she closed her eyes, fighting to remember where she was.

“You look _divine_ , Hermione,” he said, looking down at her, lingering his eyes very obviously on her chest. He leaned forward so his mouth hovered over her ear. “Why don’t we pick up where we left off last time, darling?”

People started clapping along to the next song and the sound brought her back to where she was — against McLaggen’s broad frame, her mind in a thousand places at once, and blood rushing to her head.

“Do _not_ call me that, McLaggen,” she managed to grit out through her teeth.

About a year ago, she bumped into McLaggen at a bar. She had a bit too many drinks. He brought her to his place. They shagged. That was all.

She constantly tried to tell herself that _that was all._

“I told you to stay away from me,” she said. But he only tightened his grip on her arm and pulled her closer. She felt the inconsistencies of her scar rub against the fabric of her sleeves and winced. She could smell the alcohol on him, hovering over her face in waves of hot whiskey-tinted air.

The lighting in the room dimmed significantly since the dancing began. McLaggen had found her as she walked through a darker patch in the room shadowed by a pillar. She scanned the immediate area around her, but she found no one. They were all too far or on the floor. She was very much alone.

Dipping into her defiant-Hermione reserve, she roughly pushed him away and he stumbled backwards with a grunt and cursed. She swiftly walked away, feeling slightly woozy from the alcohol already in her body and way her mind spun from anxiety and panic. She felt herself becoming emotionally weaker and she needed to block it out quick. In her haste, she didn’t pay attention to what direction she headed and found herself in front of the bar. Without thinking, she walked up to the barman.

She hardly drank anything other than wine and whatever beer on tap Ron suggested she try. She didn’t know much about alcohol at all didn’t know what to request. She managed to look the barman in the eye, who stared at her in curiosity and admiration at the idea of serving the acclaimed Hermione Granger a drink.

As she wracked her brain to make a decision, she remembered the smell of McLaggen’s breath on her not a minute before.

“A shot of whiskey, please,” she decided.

He summoned a shot glass and expertly poured the translucent brown liquid into it. He barely put it down on the table before Hermione grabbed it and downed it. She felt that burning sensation flow down her throat and warmly into her stomach.

She didn’t even flinch at the strong taste. The memories in her head were far more powerful than the liquor.

*

_“I’ll make you feel good, Hermione,” she could hear him say as he ran a hand up her thigh._

*

In the summer of last year, she lapsed into a particularly dark mental place. She had just finished closing the bookstore and said goodbye to the last of her employees, ensuring that she would be leaving soon. She had sat at her desk, studying the wood under fingers. She grazed her fingers over her left forearm and pulled up her sleeve, feeling nothing as she lightly traced each letter of her scar.

She wasn’t sure how it happened. One minute, she was sitting at her desk trying not to cry, and the next, she had walked into a bar and drank a couple beers.

 _I just need to feel something_ , she had thought. She focused on the feeling of the carbonation tickling against her tongue and flowing down her throat.

But the thing about alcohol – it numbed. She went from feeling nothing to feeling wholly _empty_.

McLaggen had walked into the bar after a stressful day’s work following a mission assigned to him by the Ministry. She could not recall a single detail he told her about his day. She smiled warmly at him, feeling dead inside. He scooted closer to her. She cursed her decision to sit in a booth for the reason of closing herself off from others and being in her own corner. As he moved closer to her, she just felt trapped.

She drunkenly spilled her deep insecurities to him. She lost control and she gave the worst person possible pieces of her. She gave him her insecurities about her work, feelings of failure, and how she felt that she would never find somebody who could love her as she craved to be loved.

McLaggen – he said all the right things to her drunken mind. She went with him to his flat and he truly did make her feel good – until he didn’t. As their actions became more heated, he grew more possessive, rough, and dominant. When she didn’t want to continue, he used her insecurities against her so she would finish – so _he_ could finish.

He said all the right words to make her feel like utter shit. She just wanted to be enough. She wanted to be enough for someone. She wanted to be able to feel something.

She snapped her eyes shut and then opened them again to see the barman intently looking at her.

“Another one,” she said. “Please.”

He poured her another one. She felt good. Warm. And most importantly, she was no longer _thinking_. No longer feeling. But now she needed some air.

She had the sense to obtain a water from the barman and left him a sizeable tip. She missed the curious look he gave her as she walked out of the reception hall alone, sipping at her water.

In the foyer, McLaggen found her again. He snuck up behind her and snaked his arms around her waist.

Something in her flared up again and she set her glass of water down on an end table. This time, she would fight.

He smiled victoriously at her when she placed her hands around his neck.

“I knew you’d come around,” he said, looking smug. “Have you been drinking? Now, this is _too_ reminiscent of the last time we met… when you felt alone...” He leaned forward closer to her face.

She froze at his words. What was that about fighting again? Her courage waning, her body stiffened and she felt cold.

“How you never felt like you were enough,” he whispered against her neck. Gooseflesh appeared on her skin in panic. “I made you feel like you were enough… you’ll never feel enough for anybody, remember that?”

The blood in her body began to pulse and switched back into fight mode.

“When’s the last time somebody made love to you like I did, Hermione? When’s the last time somebody found you worth a shag?”

She saw pure, Gryffindor red.

In the next second, she kneed him. Hard. He cursed loudly and almost fell to the floor with his hands over his groin. Hermione walked forward and towered over him.

“Get the _fuck_ away from me, McLaggen,” she said seriously, trying not to tremble. Despite the several drinks in her bloodstream, she still felt the panic rising up within her.

*

_“Cormac, I think I’m going to head home–” she had said as she gently pushed his chest away. Maybe if she used his first name, he would be gentler?_

_“Come on, darling, just relax,” he responded as he tightened his grips on her wrists. He hovered over her on his bed._

_Still drunk, Hermione didn’t have her regular tenacity to tell him off and leave on her own. If she tried Apparating right now, she would likely be splinched._

_“Cormac, I don’t want to right now,” she said, slurring her words slightly. He continued to touch her, running his hand down her chest. “And I can’t Apparate on my own right now. Could you please help me get home?”_

_Nice. Sickeningly nice and sweet as he touched her without her consent._

_“I’ll help you get home when I finish.” He sounded annoyed as he roughly touched her and grabbed her sides. It took all of Hermione to not cry in that moment._

_She was so helpless._

*

No, no, no. When one memory started, the others tended to follow. Her heart started racing and her breath caught in her throat.

She was going to have a panic attack. On Harry and Ginny’s wedding day.

She clasped her eyes shut as if the thoughts would go away the darker it got. In the moment, she always forgot that closing her eyes never helped. The darkness was where her insecurities and bad memories waited. She had to remember to keep her eyes _open_.

McLaggen found the strength to stand up again and towered over her. Fear filled her again, exhausting her and causing her hands to quiver against her sides. Whether she opened or closed her eyes, she was stuck. She would only see him and what he did and how he made her feel. And how it was her fault. Always her fault.

McLaggen cupped her face and grazed his thumb over her cheeks as she stood frozen.

“Oh, darling, don’t start crying now. You know how good I can make you feel,” he said raspily. He sounded physically parched. Thirsty. “How I made you feel you were _worth_ something?”

She snapped her eyes open angrily to directly look into his eyes, which were much too close to her own. Her emotions teetered one way to the other quicker than she could consciously process.

“Shut it, McLaggen. Don’t do this here, out of all places, out of all days,” Hermione said shakily, trying to remain angry, but feeling herself slip into shame.

 _My fault. All my fault,_ Hermione said like a destructive mantra in her head.

“I’m not worth it,” she said feebly.

“You will be if you let me, darling,” he said, leaning over and gently kissing her on the cheek.

Her eyes welled up in tears, but before a single one could fall, she felt a slight warmth behind her.

“I think that’s enough, McLaggen,” a familiar voice said sternly from behind Hermione.

_Meaningful coincidence._

This snapped her back to the present and she vehemently pushed the man attempting to advance on her away. She looked angrily toward McLaggen through her tear-filled eyes. She just needed to snap out of it and she would take care of it all by herself. She got herself in this mess and she would get herself out. It was no one’s fault but her own. She let him do it. She let him tell her what to do.

She just wanted to get home.

“This has got nothing to do with you, _Malfoy_ ,” McLaggen spat as if his name were a curse word.

Hermione looked behind her, meeting Malfoy’s eyes for a second. It only took a second. No hint of underestimation. Confidence surged through her veins like lightning.

“And it has everything to do with _me_ , McLaggen,” Hermione said boldly, turning to face him again. Her voice sounded like a rasp at the start, as if she were speaking for the first time. The energy surrounding them changed immediately. Hermione’s magic radiated from her in invisible waves.

“Get the _fuck_ out,” she said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> let's gooooooo!


End file.
